


Turn Your Face Away (And Still Look Back)

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: When You're Going Through Hell, Keep Going [2]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-24
Updated: 2011-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:39:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3220946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Becker’s life is always unnecessarily complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Effusive thanks to Luka, who caught all the stupid mistakes I made because it took me about six months to write.

            “And we’re supposed to just accept this guy, just like that?” Abby Maitland said. There was real fury in her voice, so Becker decided against stepping out from behind the door. “Stephen’s been gone less than a month, he could still come back!”

 

            “But he won’t,” Connor said, and while Abby sounded angry, he sounded sad. “Let’s face it, Abby. How many reasons to come back has he got?”

 

            Abby was silent. “He likes you,” she offered after a while. “Surely he’ll miss you.”

 

            “Well. Maybe he will, and maybe he won’t.” Connor set the kettle boiling. “Give Becker a chance, Abs.”  


            “If he gives me one,” Abby said bitterly. “Gun-happy tosser. I hate house-training new soldiers!”

 

            “Why don’t you give him the chance you never gave Stephen?” Connor snapped.

 

            Abby left in a hurry. The kettle boiled.

 

            “Finn, mate, you can come out from there,” Connor said, sounding tired. “I can see you from here. So would Abby, if she weren’t so narked.”

 

            Becker nudged the doorstop and let the door into the rec room’s kitchen swing closed. “I’m not Finn.”

 

            There was a short, horrible pause, and then Connor turned back to the kettle. “Yeah, I noticed. Tea?”

 

            “Please.” Becker watched Connor carefully as he got down mugs and sniffed at the milk just to check. Of course, Becker had been at the ARC about two days. He didn’t know what Connor looked like normally. But he was pretty sure that Connor hadn’t been sleeping, and he doubted that Abby was always so worn and snappish, or that Cutter usually engaged in hour-long shouting matches with James Lester.

 

            “Connor,” Becker said, “can I ask a question?”

 

            “You can ask, I’m not sure I’ll be able to answer,” Connor said absently, reaching for the sugar. It was just out of his reach, so Becker leaned up and got it for him.

 

            “Tell me about Stephen.” Becker handed the sugar over.

 

            Connor nearly dropped the packet, and there was a long moment of quiet. Connor’s massive brown eyes were locked on Becker’s own, and a lot of expressions Becker couldn’t quite read were playing across his face.

 

            “Like I said,” Connor replied finally. “Some questions, I can’t answer.”

 

***

 

            “The men talk a lot about Stephen Hart,” Becker said neutrally, over a pint with his boss. Becker thought to himself that he must be more curious about Stephen Hart than he’d realised, or he’d never endanger what was already a pretty perilous social interaction. But Becker found that topics of manly small talk weren’t fitting the bill, and, fuck it – it was Tom Ryan. If he stepped out of line he’d be dead, and Becker preferred to make that mistake over something he was genuinely interested in.

 

            “Do they,” Ryan said.

 

            “Bits and pieces.” Becker played it down. “But he clearly mattered to them. And Maitland, Temple and Cutter look fit to break in three over him.” He cast a glance at Ryan, who was watching him with cool blue eyes, and then, with deliberate casualness, looked away. “Whoever he was.”

 

            Ryan didn’t say anything for a long time.

 

            “Miss Maitland called me his replacement, the other day,” Becker said idly, drawing in the moisture rings on the bar. Becker wasn’t stupid; he knew this was a short-term baby-sitting position, and he could be gone within weeks. He was only here so, as Lester put it, there are ‘no more Stephen Harts’. Some men would find that an insult, but Becker was accustomed to cutting his coat to fit his cloth, and he knew – without irony or bitterness – that he was good at looking out for people. Even if they were as determined to get themselves killed as the anomaly team.

 

            “She was wrong,” Ryan answered, measured. “You couldn’t replace Stephen Hart. You’re different.”

 

            Becker let this sit quietly between the two of them for a few moments, then resumed. “It would help if I knew who she thinks I’m replacing.”

 

            “Surely Miss Wickes gave you the file,” Ryan countered. “If you’re asking me questions you must have spoken to her.”

 

            “She gave me a sheet of A4 that told me fuck-all about why Stephen Hart matters so much or where he is now. Plus a really unsubtle hint about letting bygones be bygones.” Becker knew Lorraine Wickes of old; however unsubtle her hints, he knew he should accept them at face value.

 

            “Oh, really.” Ryan sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, then finished his pint. Becker downed his own, then silently indicated to the barman that the next round was on him. Ryan nodded his thanks. “Stephen Hart was a very brave man with the worst case of tunnel vision I’ve seen since Kermit married Cara. Skills – tracking, hunting, pulling stupid fucking stunts that never quite got him killed, it’ll have been on your sheet of A4. Relations – none. Cutter might have claimed him as family once, but that’s gone.  Helen Cutter slept with Hart about ten years ago, when he was a student, and Hart kept it a secret until Helen blew the whistle six months ago. After that, Cutter shut him out. Friends – he pushed them all away. He turned in on himself. Three weeks ago, he handed in his notice and left.”

 

            Becker digested this. “Before the…” He searched for words. “…unceremonious dismissal of Oliver Leek?”

 

            There was a glint of humour in Ryan’s eyes, the first Becker had ever seen. “Nicely put. Yes, a week before. And nobody’s seen him since. His flat is shut up, his phone’s disconnected. He’s gone.”

 

            “Odd,” Becker said.

 

            “Really fucking odd,” Ryan agreed. He said nothing else.

 

            Becker changed the subject.

 

 ***

 

            _I have awesome new housemates and an awesome new house and too many boxes of books to carry myself_ , Becker read, scrolling through Morris’s latest rambling screed of an email. _Come and help me move in._

 

            Becker grinned and made his first request for leave.

 

            “If you must,” Lester said snootily, looking down his nose at Becker despite being more than half a head shorter.   


            Becker smiled blandly. “You know what family’s like, sir.”

 

***

 

            Morris had been staying at home whilst waiting for her accommodation at her new university to come through, so Becker got to see Freddie – who had grown several inches and started playing football for the first team, both of which he was very proud of – and Morris’s parents, as well. There was even a Sunday roast. It wasn’t Sunday, but he was touched. They all talked to him about his new job in the carefully circumscribed terms they’d learnt from him, never asking too much, steering clear of things he couldn’t answer. He was so very grateful for them.

 

            Morris’s childhood bedroom was empty; a stack of cardboard boxes teetered just outside. Freddie made a smart comment about moving in, so Becker grabbed him and held him still while Morris tickled him until he shrieked, squirmed out of Becker’s grip and ran away. They were all grinning and laughing, and Jack and Frieda were shouting upstairs about kids needing to keep the racket down. It felt comfortable and easy, and there was no reason why looking into Morris’s bedroom should make Becker’s heart swoop uncomfortably. It hurt, looking at that emptied room, the stripped single mattress, the square of floor where his airbed used to go in the holidays, the desk they shared, elbow to elbow, the faded blue curtains.

 

            Becker liked Freddie. He’d always liked Freddie. Hell, he loved the kid; at this point, Jack and Frieda said, he was as much their son as Freddie was, and he knew he acted like it, knew they looked like a family. He’d never had any brothers or sisters, so he didn’t really know what it would feel like. But Morris was like his twin, and Freddie his little brother. And Becker still didn’t like the idea of the compost heap of comics and books and clothes and football gear that made up Freddie’s room being transposed to Morris’s. His and Morris’s.

 

            “Hey,” Morris said, wrapping an arm around his waist and squeezing. He slung an arm around her shoulders, rested his cheek against her short, sandy hair, and she snuggled into him. “Mi casa, su casa. And you know you’re always welcome here, any time. You don’t need me to bring you.”

 

            Becker pushed out of his mind all the times she’d done exactly that. He only had a vague, nightmarish memory of the second-to-last time he came to Morris’s childhood home. He’d collapsed on the doorstep of her flat in Durham, eyes glassy with exhaustion and strung out on caffeine and adrenaline crashes but completely unable to sleep, and she had thrown over her Master’s for a whole week to spend two days persuading him to sleep in her flat, devoting the third day and remainder of the week to getting him to her parents’ home and continuing to comfort him. He had surfaced by the time she went back to Durham, fortunately, but he still hadn’t been exactly all there.

 

            The last visit had been an apology visit. He’d come alone and made sure to be conspicuously healthy and charming. It fooled the shrink in Hereford and it more or less convinced Freddie, but he knew Jack and Frieda didn’t believe a word.

 

            “I know,” Becker said heavily, and let Morris go. He smile was deliberately bright. “Right, let’s shift this.”

 

            It was easy to load up, with so many people to help; Jack mainly made cups of tea and helpful suggestions, but Frieda, Morris and Freddie all got stuck in. It took maybe half an hour to load Morris’s life into Becker’s car – Morris’s was already at Exeter – and then her parents and brother were waving them off as Becker pulled out of the drive without clipping the neighbours’ potted plants and Morris kicked off her shoes and tuned the radio to a station she knew he hated.

 

            They spent the whole drive talking. They normally spent all their time around each other talking, with few, if any, lapses in conversation; silence was never awkward, and when they’d had a chance to see each other a lot they might sometimes stop talking and simply enjoy being in the same place, but they hadn’t met in person for months. It was a relief to speak freely; he couldn’t really do so with anyone else. Becker never had to think of the next thing to say or worry about how Morris would take a particular piece of phrasing. There were few things they never talked about, and those had been off-limits for so long they were second nature.

 

            Morris had a lot to say about her new university, her new colleagues, her new home, her research. (“Looking forward to living back down south again?” “Oh God, just so long as they don’t think I’m northern…”) He had a lot to say about his new job, his poky little MoD-issue flat, his colleagues, some mutual friends – well, friends of his from his platoon at Sandhurst and later, friends who’d adopted Morris because they had looked at Becker and Morris and accepted that they couldn’t really have one without the other, and were now as much Morris’s friends as his. Morris followed all their movements with a pinboard, a map of the world, bits of string and colour-coded notes, indicating health, current partner, whereabouts, occupation, birthday, allergies, other things like that. It was a work of art, matching the one of her friends from Durham and their friends from Oxford, and Becker regularly called her up to ask her to consult it because he’d forgotten somebody’s girlfriend’s name and if he fucked that one up again he was toast. Becker helped her update it, her scribbling in a notebook as they stopped at motorway services, him shouting information about Smithy’s new boyfriend and the present state of his physiotherapy at her over the noise of the petrol pump and other cars. He wondered if he would ever turn to her and ask her to put somebody from the ARC on the pinboards. Connor, maybe. He liked Connor, and he thought he’d get along okay with Morris. Abby, too.

 

            Cutter, never. Morris was allergic to that particular kind of academic know-all. Becker fully understood and participated in this allergy, particularly after experiencing Cutter’s complete and utter lack of regard for his own life – or anyone else’s.

 

            They wrapped that up several hours into the car ride (Taffy’s complicated love life took up a full hour of the two of them disentangling the various girlfriends they’d heard of; Morris’s tally did not match Becker’s, and they still weren’t sure if Alix and Alexia were the same person or not) and Becker asked Morris about her housemates. She’d only given him a brief sketch of them in her email, but he knew she must know more about them than that, or she would never have agreed to move in with them.

 

            “There’s two of them – Steve and Sarah,” Morris said, “I told you that, and I told you they’re both post-docs like me. Sarah’s an archaeologist, she was at Durham too, we get on really well. Steve’s a palaeontologist. We saw him at a pub crawl for incoming post-docs looking sad and angsty and scooped him up. He’s a sweetie, and he’s very pretty, but he _hates_ talking.”

 

            Becker hummed, building a mental pinboard: _Morris’s housemates_. With luck, he’d see a lot of these people. “Family? Girlfriends? Boyfriends?”

 

            “No family, either of them,” Morris told him, cracking open a bottle of Fanta and offering him a gulp before taking a swig herself. “Except Sarah has a Great-Aunt Viola. Her parents are just – really distant? She never, ever sees them. I don’t think there was, like, a distinct break. Maybe the fact that she’s a lesbian helped, but – it’s not like you and your dad.”

 

            Becker did not flinch. He might if it were someone else, provided it was someone not at work, not watching him for his next mistake, but not Morris, who could always see his every twitch as he made it. This was not one of their avoided topics: Morris could drive a train through this subject if she liked, and Becker wouldn’t find it more than a little painful. Morris was the one who had thrown Becker’s father out of Merton on his ear and bought drinks for the porters who’d helped her before feeding Becker chocolate and cuddling him while he’d cried very quietly on her shoulder.

 

            “Oh, and she’s dating someone,” Morris added, not oblivious but not referring back to the sore spot just yet. “Haven’t met the girl yet; all I know is she has green hair.”

 

            Becker pulled an involuntary face but added this snippet to his mental pinboard nonetheless.

 

            “I _know_ , right? As for Steve, he said absolutely nothing about his family. Nothing at all. Nothing about his past, either, or any girlfriends or boyfriends, except he sometimes mentions someone called Allison – but I’m pretty sure he’s gay? I mean, that’s what I would have said. Or at least, I think he’s interested in men. Bi, maybe? Anyway, he doesn’t talk about it. He just looks faintly tortured, really. But he’s a lovely bloke if you’re not asking him leading questions!”

 

            “Do you collect them?” Becker said before he could stop himself.

 

            Morris spat a mouthful of Fanta all over the windscreen and laughed hysterically for a good ten minutes. Becker could see his own smirk in the mirror.    

 

            “Not intentionally,” Morris said, when she’d recovered. “I guess I do run to waifs and strays… but rescuing him was Sarah’s idea, so not my fault at all, really.”

 

            “Fair play,” Becker agreed. “Tell me more about them.”

 

            Morris launched into a detailed description of Sarah’s preferred hobbies and interests, culminating in a spirited retelling of the time they were thrown out of a regional museum for critiquing the exhibits too loudly, before giving a decidedly bare-bones explanation of Steve’s. He was an environmentalist, he played squash and ran a lot. He liked trashy music. He owned approximately two large sausage bags of stuff and he bicycled everywhere. That was all Morris knew.

 

            Becker was not at all sure about her moving in with this guy, and wondered if frightening him a little bit – carefully! – or making it clear that he and Morris spoke at all hours of the day and night and were usually in daily contact so he would know if anything was wrong – subtly! – would be appropriate. Morris would definitely say no to that, but Becker kept it in mind, just in case. He’d know when he saw Steve, probably. He was an okay judge of character, mostly.


	2. Chapter 2

            So, Becker thought, coming to an abrupt halt at the top of the stairs, Morris forgot to mention that her new housemate was _gorgeous_.

 

            “Hi,” he said, and the man who had just come in through the open front door and toed his running shoes off looked up at Becker.

 

            God. Bright blue eyes, high cheekbones, straight nose, full mouth, short brown hair in spikes and flushed and sweaty from his run, t-shirt and shorts clinging to him – fucking _hell_. Morris could have _said_.

 

            “You must be Steve,” Becker said, belatedly recognising that Steve had gone tense, his face carefully blank. “I’m Beck. I came to help Morris move in.”

 

            Steve relaxed slightly. “Oh, yeah. She mentioned. Can I help?”

 

            Becker shrugged. “There’s not that much more to go. A couple more boxes of books.”

 

            Steve smiled. “Morris and her book habit.”

 

            Becker smiled back. It was hard not to, really. He jogged down the rest of the stairs and outside. Steve followed him without bothering to put shoes on, and bent over to heave one of the last boxes of books, one tucked up against the back of the driver’s seat, out of the car. Becker did have a modicum of self-control, so his eyes did not cross at the sight. He simply leant in himself and grabbed the next box of books. It was heavy, but no heavier than any of the other things he’d heaved around today.

 

            “You run?” he asked casually, slamming the boot shut, locking the car and following Steve back into the house.

 

            “Yeah.”

 

            “Training for an event?”

 

            “No, I just like to keep fit.”

 

            Steve didn’t say anything more, and Becker didn’t push it. He was, as Morris had told Becker at some length, shy. Becker followed him into Morris’s room, and set his box of books down next to Steve’s. Morris was sitting on the floor, cataloguing them.

 

            “You look pretty fit yourself,” Steve said suddenly, and Morris glanced up in surprise, brown eyes round and owlish behind her glasses. She opened her mouth, then looked at Becker and closed it again.

 

            Becker glanced down at himself. He knew he was in good shape, and the faint smirk on Steve’s face said that he knew it, too. “I try,” Becker said dryly.

 

            “Beck is a fitness freak,” Morris said. “I see you two have met, then, so I don’t have to do awkward introductions like I did with Sarah.”

 

            It was not Becker’s fault that Sarah and her girlfriend had been canoodling, half-dressed, on the kitchen table when Morris had let Becker in and he went to make them a cup of tea. It was equally not Becker’s fault that the girlfriend – who did indeed have waist-length moss-green hair - had shrieked and fallen off the table. He still felt as if he was being blamed for it, and said so.

 

            Morris just rolled her eyes and shook her head.

 

            “At least you know Sarah’s girlfriend’s name now,” Becker said defensively, and Steve demanded the entire story. Morris told it, clearly enjoying herself, and Becker hid his face in his hand and waited it out.

 

            Steve didn’t laugh at him, but that smirk did get a lot less faint. “I should go and take a shower,” he said, and excused himself.

 

            “Yes, yes you should,” Morris yelled after him, eliciting laughter, and Becker grinned and twitched as she poked him in the leg with a screwdriver.

 

            “What did you do?” she demanded in a hiss, kicking the doorstop out from where it was wedged so that the door swung shut. “I’ve never heard him say so many words in a row!”

 

            “I just talked to him,” Becker said.

 

            “You hit on him!”

 

            “Show me the red-blooded gay man who wouldn’t,” Becker retorted, without bothering to defend himself. Truth be told, he was barely flirting with Steve, but that wasn’t for lack of interest and Becker suspected he’d telegraphed his interest very clearly. “Jesus Christ, Morris. Have you _seen_ him?”

 

            Morris pulled a face. “Well, yes, but… Beck, he’s fragile.”

 

            “I won’t damage him,” Becker said, amused, and possessed himself of the screwdriver before Morris could stab him with it again. “We’re big boys, Morris, I’m sure we can flirt without damaging anything.”

 

            “Ugh,” Morris said comprehensively. “Just don’t sleep with him and make it awkward.”

 

            “I promise not to screw him on five minutes’ notice,” Becker answered gravely, and caught the book Morris threw at his head and laughed at her. “Come on, Morris. I’ve only just met him. And who knows, maybe he doesn’t find me attractive.”

 

            Morris made an indeterminate noise of deep suspicion. “Do you think I was born yesterday? Also, have you seen yourself lately? You’re wearing a vague air of dishevelment, a healthy glow, and one of those t-shirts you shrank in the wash in first year because you didn’t know how to use a tumble-dryer and still won’t throw away!”

 

            “My shirts are not allowed to be a sore spot unless you admit that wearing jeans with a rip from knee to ankle and most of a back pocket hanging off is wrong and pointless.” Becker sat down and took a Swiss Army knife from his pocket, the better to deconstruct the packaging Morris’s new bookshelves had come in.

 

            “They were _perfect_ for excavation,” Morris huffed.

 

            “They were _ventilated_.”

 

            “They were really comfortable! And I fixed the hole with staples anyway!”

 

            “I rest my case.” Becker tugged the instructions out from where they were tucked between a thin layer of plastic and the cardboard off the box and chucked them away, before pulling out planks of Ikea pine. “Am I allowed to stay for supper, or are you going to forbid me the house in case I seduce Steve?”

 

            “Stay for supper,” Morris muttered, piling books around her.

 

            “Got a campbed?”

 

            “No,” Morris sighed. “It died. Freddie and one of his friends killed it. You can share mine.”

 

            Becker grinned. He’d shared with Morris before – generally after parties when they’d stumbled home tipsy and sleepy and couldn’t be bothered to find more than one place to sleep. She tended to migrate about the bed, taking the covers with her; Becker usually woke up cold in the middle of the night and had to strip a Morris-cocoon of half the blankets. More than one of Morris’s boyfriends had got the wrong idea in the past and had had to be taken aside to have things explained to them: Becker’s liaisons, during and after university, had usually been either casual enough never to find out Morris existed or permanent enough to learn and understand her role in his life. He honestly didn’t know what it was about himself that made straight men think he was probably at least a bit straight as well. Maybe it was the stereotype that said soldiers couldn’t be gay.

 

            “Are you bound and determined to cock-block me?” he teased.

 

            Morris stuck her tongue out at him. “Oh, please. As if I –“ and then the sound of the shower cut off and Steve’s footsteps passed by the door. Morris literally stopped to hold her breath in the middle of a sentence, and Becker couldn’t not laugh at the pre-emptively guilty look on her face.

 

            Another door, presumably Steve’s own, creaked open and swung shut with a slight bang. Morris succumbed, like Becker, to giggles, and threw something else at him. It was only a cushion this time, so Becker didn’t bother to catch it, let it bounce off his shoulder and only laughed harder.

 

            “If you care that much you can sleep on the floor,” Morris declared, and Becker grinned and shook his head.

 

            “Nah.” He looked down at the half-finished bookcase. “Where do you want this again?”

 

 

            Supper was baked potatoes – easy, simple, not even Sarah could burn it although according to Morris she’d tried – and Becker definitely ate more of the baked beans than was really his fair share. Sarah had brought mini-rolls home from the shops, apparently as an apology for making out with Leah all over the kitchen, and between the four of them they’d demolished the lot and Sarah and Morris were gossiping about a couple of third-year undergrads who’d had a messy and public break-up in the middle of the cafeteria the other day when Becker felt the nicotine cravings coming on. He got up, fishing for cigarettes and a lighter in his pocket.

 

            “-I thought you quit,” Morris said with considerable disapproval, breaking off in the middle of her sentence.

 

            Becker shrugged and smiled down at her. She knew him and his behaviour well enough to parse that.

 

            Morris squinted at him, mouth twisted. “What are you doing that’s so stressful?”

 

            “Nothing much,” Becker said, instead of ‘hunting dinosaurs’.

 

            “You didn’t try to reconcile with your dad again, did you?” Morris said, voice heavy with resignation.

 

            Becker made a non-committal noise. He had written to his parents again, specifically addressing his mother instead of his father as if it would do any good at all, and had had the letter returned in tiny little pieces he knew his mother didn’t tear, but that had been some time ago and Morris had known about it for ages. It wasn’t the trigger for him starting to smoke again; that was the anomalies.

 

            Becker was pretty sure he wouldn’t live long enough for lung cancer to be a concern.

 

            “Beck,” Morris groaned, tipping her head back over the back of her chair in despair, “we’ve talked about lost causes. Oh, god, never mind, go and smoke your – your bicoloured sticks of death.”

 

            Becker snorted and made his way outside, propping the front door open so he could get back in without having to ring the bell. There was no garden at the back of the house, just a wide alley between it and the next row of houses, but there was a lacklustre patch of grass and some pots of perennials out the front, next to a six foot square patch of tarmac masquerading as a drive. Morris’s car was parked on it. Becker leant against the side of it and lit his cigarette, eyes squinted against the glare of the setting sun. Morris had chosen a nice place to live, if you didn’t mind being a bit out of things. It was a quiet, residential sort of place. A bit of a trek from the university, but then, that was why she was bothering with her car, and there was a bus stop in the right direction just around the corner.

 

            He took the cigarette from his mouth and breathed out, smoke spiralling from his lips, and the front door swung half-open as Steve slipped out of it. Becker’s lips curled into an involuntary smile.

 

            “You too?” he said, and took another drag.

 

            Steve shook his head. “I just don’t know any of the people Morris and Sarah are talking about, that’s all. It’s boring.”

 

            “Mm.” Becker let the silence hang for a while, and Steve came and leant against the car next to him.

 

            “You an academic as well?” Steve asked, after a minute.

 

            “No.” Becker didn’t look at Steve, but he could feel Steve’s eyes on him, steady, unreadable, the colour of marine blue holes, just as easy to get lost in, just as dangerous if you didn’t know what you were doing. Becker liked diving, but he knew his limits. “Thought about it, after university, but no. I went straight into the army in the end.”

 

            “Army,” Steve repeated. He sounded genuinely startled, and Becker turned to look at him.

 

            “Yes. Is that going to be a problem?” Becker had met people who’d say it would be, or worse, lie and be stiff and difficult around him forevermore. It upset Morris, which was something Becker preferred to avoid.

 

            “No,” Steve said. He sounded truthful. “I…”

 

            “What,” Becker said more gently. “Never met a gay soldier before?”

 

            “No,” Steve said again. “No, I have, I…”

 

            He shut his mouth with a snap. Becker waited for a moment, and then when it became clear Steve wasn’t saying anything else, turned back to his cigarette.

 

            “Bad relationship?” he said, with studied casualness. “Say no more.”

 

            Steve drew a breath as if he might say something, but Becker waited again, and he didn’t. 

 

            They stayed out there in perfect silence until Becker had finished his cigarette, and Becker found himself totally comfortable. He smiled in the twilight as he crushed the end of the cigarette under his heel, and Steve smiled back at him, features just about visible in Becker’s now dark-adapted sight.

 

            “Let’s go in,” Steve said quietly.

 

             “One minute, Morris will kill me if I leave cigarette butts out here,” Becker said, and bent to scoop it up so he could bin it. When he straightened up and looked Steve in the face, Steve’s eyes had only just swept back up to his top half.

 

            Becker couldn’t help but smirk.


	3. Chapter 3

            Monday morning dawned bright and early at the ARC, and when Becker came into work he found he was the first in, excepting Lorraine Wickes, who could generally be relied upon to be three steps in front of most people. Connor was still at work, in the most technical sense of the word; one of the exiting night shift had snagged Becker on his way in to say that Connor had fixed the ADD at three in the morning and had promptly fallen asleep under it, whereupon the soldiers had dragged him out by the heels and shovelled him into one of the bunk-rooms. Becker went and checked on him, just to ensure he hadn’t fallen into a coma from sheer exhaustion – he’d picked up the group emails over the weekend, increasingly frantic apologies for the annoyance of the ADD’s klaxon, and some of them had been sent at some very odd times. Even Morris, climbing over him to get out of bed at four thirty in the morning, didn’t keep such horrible hours.

 

            Connor seemed fine. Out of the kindness of his heart, and because he was procrastinating on his paperwork, Becker went and broke into Connor’s locker and selected clean clothes, a toothbrush, and shower gel and toothpaste from the festering mass inside, then left these items beside Connor’s bed. Then he went and did his paperwork, because he could feel Miss Wickes’ stare on the back of his neck from the floor below her office. By the time he’d cracked open a Word document, with a dispirited sigh, Abby had turned up and dropped her various paraphernalia onto her desk and was swearing to herself as she searched her pockets.

 

            “You haven’t seen Connor?” she asked suddenly, looking up and running a hand through her cropped bleached hair. “He didn’t come home last night.”

 

            “Apparently he conked out on the floor under the ADD in the small hours of this morning,” Becker replied absently, barely noticing that Abby was actually talking to him, _voluntarily_. Two weeks ago, she would have walked upstairs and asked Miss Wickes, or gone hunting for Jenny, who could have been in any one of an exciting variety of offices, handling their occupants’ apparent desire to reveal their activities to the world through sheer clumsiness. “Rees and Carter carried him down to one of the bunkrooms. He’s still there.”

 

            “Oh good,” Abby said absently, uttered a cry of triumph as she delved deep in a pocket, came up with a USB stick, and settled down to her computer.

 

            Cutter dropped by a couple of hours later, looking rumpled and distant as usual, and asked Abby and Becker if they had masking tape, or failing that a small knife. Becker had several knives to hand, none of which could reasonably be described as small, but while he was weighing the wisdom of lending any of these to Professor Cutter and coming firmly down on the side of ‘never in a million years’, Abby had already produced a Leatherman from nowhere and handed it over. Becker rifled his desk drawers and discovered (as well as a couple of the aforementioned knives) a roll of masking tape, which he tossed to Cutter, and Cutter actually _thanked_ both him and Abby before vanishing.

 

            Becker stared at the space where he had been, then automatically turned to look at Abby. Abby, in a moment of unspoken synchronisation, was staring back at him, her jaw dropped.

 

            “Did he actually just say thank you?” Abby said rather weakly.

 

            Becker nodded, somewhat dazed. “I thought he was allergic to manners…”

 

            “He’s been more abrupt since – well.” Abby waved a vague hand, and shutters fell behind her moonstone eyes.

 

            “Hm,” Becker said, hearing the gates clang shut on the first pleasant interaction he’d ever had with Abby Maitland, and went back to his work. The first deadly reminder email had landed in his inbox half an hour ago, and he was having to restrain the urge to send a grovelling reply promising his lifeblood, soul, and/or firstborn child if only he could escape punishment on this occasion.

 

            “Um…”

 

            Becker paused, surprised, then looked up. Abby was looking rather anxiously at him and chewing her lip.

 

            “Do you know how to get the printer by the water cooler to work?” she blurted. “It always jams halfway through when I try.”

 

            “Solid kick, front and centre,” Becker said automatically, scrambling for some conversational graces. “I find that usually works. Failing that, ask whatsisname – R something –“

 

            “Ranjit,” Abby supplied. “Yeah, that might work.” She bit her lip again and pressed an emphatic combination of keys on the keyboard.

 

            “Are you late with your reports?” Becker asked, feeling as if the onus was now on him to make a spot of conversation.

 

            Abby looked startled. “Oh – no, the deadline on this is tomorrow.” She cracked a smile. “Are you?”

 

            Becker winced.

 

            “Don’t worry about it,” Abby said, almost grinning. “Lorraine sets the deadlines a bit early so that everything does more or less come in when it’s meant to.”

 

            “She’ll still kill me if it’s not done when she said she wanted it by, though,” Becker pointed out, with undeniable – if convoluted – logic.

 

            “Come on, you’re a big grown-up boy, surely you can survive the wrath of one PA!”

 

            “Not Lorraine Wickes,” Becker said darkly, comically exaggerating the hints of death and destruction in his voice to try to keep that smile on Abby’s face. It worked for about a second, and then she wandered off to find the printer.

 

            Becker glanced at the clock – five whole minutes of friendly interaction with someone on the team! – and awarded himself a mental point.

             

            The anomaly detector went off at about eleven o’clock, eliciting a variety of reactions from the anomaly team, most of whom were ensconced in the break-room kitchen, drinking tea and gossiping. Jenny dropped her mug and swore, Danny spared a moment to laugh at her before charging off in the direction of the garage, and Abby bolted for the office and the team’s anomaly kit before heading for the armoury and her tranquiliser pistol. Acting on automatic, Becker shot down to the bunkrooms, grabbed a zombie-like Connor and hauled him by main force to the armoury, collecting various bits of weaponry one-handed from Lyle before stuffing Connor headfirst into a jeep. Becker looked wildly round for the remaining members of the team and cursed as Danny hopped onto his motorcycle just ahead of his grasp – only to be collared by Jenny, who had strong opinions she wasn’t afraid to express about members of the team going off half-cocked in their own vehicles and who  had appeared from the door leading to the main ARC like the wrath of Athena just as Danny was rejoicing in his freedom. Becker could honestly have kissed her, but since she was currently delivering a world-class bollocking to Danny Quinn he decided that the path of wisdom involved staying well out of her way.

             

            The anomaly was in the back end of a council estate somewhere in Slough. Becker had certainly seen prettier settings for anomalies, but also – and he felt this was fairly important – ones where the anomaly was more visible. Lady Luck had parked this one inside the shelter that held one of the blocks of flats’ bins, to the detriment of said bins but also to the gladdening of Jenny Lewis’s heart, since the anomaly couldn’t be seen from any angle unless you were standing directly in front of it. They’d had to play an embarrassing game of ‘warmer, colder’ with Connor’s anomaly detector in order to find it, and Finn and Adey had had to run down the two young gentlemen who had spotted the soldiers coming round the corner and decided that they had better things to do with their day than stare at shiny things, but this seemed to be a relatively positive anomaly, as anomalies went. Nobody had gone through, according to the boys, and Danny had been able to confirm this by sticking his head through the anomaly and noting a total absence of footprints in the thick mud on the other side. Nothing had come out, either; there were no muddy footprints of any shape or form, and no bird or insect life was visible on the other side of the anomaly. Nonetheless, Becker overheard snatches of Jenny reporting an exotic bird lost in the area at the same time as she directed Finn in winding a roll of police tape around several concrete pillars and instructed her police contacts in her chosen story of a spurious bomb threat.

           

            Becker, meanwhile, exerted himself to frightening the living daylights out of the kids. He went easy on them, since they couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen, and they were already scared enough by Finn and Adey tracking them down and the fact that they were being loomed over by a number of large, heavily armed men. He and Danny had the art of alarming mouthy witnesses down to a science by now, and Connor hanging about in the background looking sleepy and dishevelled and saying the most outrageous things with a look of supreme sincerity in his dark eyes helped a good deal. It took less than five minutes before the boys were meekly handing their phones over to Connor, who deleted the footage and pictures they’d taken before giving them back, winking at them, and telling the kids to scram before Miss Lewis came over and decided they hadn’t been nasty enough.

 

            The boys nodded and fled. One of them was in such a hurry he bumped straight into Ditzy and scrambled away gibbering. Ditzy merely smiled benignly at him, and Becker, out of pity, suppressed an instinctive snigger. He caught Ditzy’s eye and grinned appreciatively instead. Ditz was easily four times the kid’s size, tall, broad-shouldered and heavily built, and very intimidating to the average human being; when handling casualties, Becker had noticed him deliberately making himself appear smaller, taking care to smile and leave scared people escape routes.

 

            “Not bad kids,” Danny remarked with a sideways grin. “I almost felt bad for scaring them.”

 

            Connor looked faintly confused, scrubbed a hand through his rather greasy hair and shrugged, then took the anomaly detector off the belt loop it was attached to and started muttering calculations under his breath.

 

            “What was it?” Becker asked impulsively.

 

            Connor blinked at him. “What was… what?”

 

            “You noticed something and didn’t say it.”

 

            Connor blinked some more. So did Danny. Then Connor shrugged again and turned away. “I didn’t just delete the anomaly photos off their phones,” he said, back turned to Danny. “Yeah, maybe they are good kids, but they’re good kids who haven’t been very nice to some other kids.”

 

            “Nobody’s an angel,” Becker remarked.

 

            “No,” Connor said, and gave Becker a fleeting smile. “So I just deleted the photos, instead of forwarding them to the police. They were old, anyway.”

 

            Danny shook his head; he’d only looked taken aback for a moment, then resignation had settled across his craggy face. “Stupid kids do the worst things, eh?”

 

            “Yeah. They do.” Connor gestured vaguely at the anomaly, stifling a yawn. “Looks pretty quiet. Reckon anyone will notice if I go and have a kip in the back of the car?”

 

            “Maybe we’ll be heading back soon,” Finn said hopefully, peeling police tape off his foot. Becker seized him by the collar to stop him overbalancing and wondered, for the umpteenth time, how a man who couldn’t tie his own shoelaces without encountering disaster was also one of the best long-range marksmen he’d ever encountered.

 

            A triceratops stuck its head out of the bin shelter. Becker unceremoniously dropped Finn and grabbed his rifle, calling to Abby to get out from directly under the triceratops’ nose. Somewhat to his surprise, she went.

 

            “Finn, mate,” Connor moaned, speedily falling back as Becker established a perimeter and ensured all the civilians were on the correct side of it, “what do I keep _telling_ you about saying things like that?”

 

            Fortunately, the triceratops thought better of a field-trip to Slough, assisted by Adey rolling a smoke grenade under its nose, and they only had to wait another two hours before the anomaly finally closed and they could leave. Connor had already fallen asleep in the back seat.

 

            “He stayed at work all weekend,” Abby volunteered, turning round to squint at Connor in the back. “Didn’t come home.”

 

            Becker glanced up into the mirror. Connor was drooling on Danny’s shoulder; Becker felt that it was indicative of one of Danny’s finer qualities that Danny was neither complaining nor making an effort of any kind to wake Connor. Becker made a listening sort of noise.

 

            “He takes it personally when the ADD doesn’t work…”

 

            “He takes just about everything personally,” Jenny remarked.

 

            Abby winced slightly. Becker made a note of it, but said nothing.

 

            “He doesn’t,” Abby said defensively. “He’s really good like that, just laid-back and stuff.” She grimaced, but with an affectionate overtone. “Okay, sometimes he’s too laid-back about stuff like the washing up, but still…”

 

            “Real men don’t wash up,” Danny joked.

 

            “Yes they do,” Becker, Abby and Jenny said simultaneously. Becker couldn’t speak for the others, but he was certainly thinking of the sign above the sink in the rec room, in Ditzy’s scrawl, which read: DO YOUR OWN SODDING WASHING UP – THAT MEANS YOU, QUINN.

 

            Abby snorted, and caught Becker’s eye; he smirked himself, then let a chuckle escape, and the next thing he knew they were all laughing like loons, including Danny.

 

            “Wuh? Whozit?” Connor mumbled, emerging blearily from sleep.

 

            “Go back to sleep, Conn,” Abby said affectionately, and Danny dragged Connor’s head back down to his shoulder and patted it firmly, clearly intending that Connor should stay there for a bit. Connor blinked, then yawned cavernously and went straight back to sleep.

 

            Becker grinned at the road. They weren’t a bad team, really.


	4. Chapter 4

            Becker heard the scraping of a key in the front door lock and grinned. So did Taffy, who was in the process of regaling Ditzy with the story of one of his more disastrous dates. Everyone but Becker was in throes of laughter, and that was only because Becker’s throat hurt so much.

 

            “That’ll be Morris,” Taffy said approvingly, breaking off. “God, is that girl ever late for anything?”

 

            There was a bang, a hiss, and a heave. The stubborn door flew open, revealing a harried Morris on the other side. She was red in the face, probably from having run up the stairs, and her floppy dishwasher-blonde hair was almost as awry as her glasses.

 

            “Apparently not,” Becker croaked, attracting her attention.

 

            “Hey Morris!” Taffy chirped, waving at Morris. Good man, Taffy, Becker thought with relief as Morris fell for the distraction. He’d read the split-second expressions on Morris’s face just as Becker had, and registered that Morris was about to kill Becker for having made himself so ill that he was trussed up in a blanket on his own sofa, being watched over by one current colleague and an old mate who had deviated from his precious weekend plans to see Becker and had found himself nursing the sick – or at least pouring copious hot Ribena down Becker’s throat and ringing Morris, which came to the same thing.

 

            “Taffy!” Morris cried, threw herself across the room and was duly picked up and whirled around. Taffy’s nickname came as much from a soft heart as from his strong Welsh accent, and he’d always been very fond of Morris. Despite his pounding headache, Becker beamed.

 

            Ditzy melted back into a cupboard. The living-room was not very large, and it now contained rather more people than was strictly advisable. His self-effacement, however, did not detract from the fact that he was all but twitching with curiosity.

 

            “Ditzy, this is my best friend, Morris,” Becker announced. His throat felt like sandpaper, and talking through it was agony. “Morris, Ditzy. Colleague.”

 

            Morris broke off from scolding Taffy for not telling her he was in the south of England for a change, and switched focus with an unnerving speed. “Hi, Ditzy, nice to meet you.” She shook hands and smiled nicely, pushing her blonde fringe back off her face. “What has this moron done to himself? When you called it sounded so bad I was expecting bubonic plague. Or dysentery at the very least.”

 

            Ditzy smiled down at her. “It’s just the flu, miss, but it’s a bloody awful case – excuse my language.”

 

            Becker could see Morris thinking to ask whether he genuinely believed that the word ‘bloody’ constituted bad language, but she bit her tongue on it. “Is there anything I should know about it?”

 

            “You could talk to me,” Becker objected, and rasped up some more phlegm.

 

            “Ew,” Taffy said with more revulsion than a man whose experience encompassed two separate tours of Afghanistan should really have admitted to, and passed him the tissue box. Becker made sure to be extra noisy and disgusting when he spat the phlegm out into a tissue.

 

            Morris patted him absently on the head and ignored him. Becker instinctively relaxed into her hand on his hair. “I mean, like, how long is it expected to last, are there any warning signs of anything…?”  


            “It’s a standard flu,” Ditzy assured her. “Somebody’s kid caught it at school, and they were fine within the week, but one of my mates has been out for two.”

 

            Becker covered a snort with a sneeze; describing Cutter as one of Ditzy’s mates was a bit of a stretch, although the professor was perfectly friendly with most of the soldiers who’d been on the project for a reasonably long time. Morris, who would have picked up the snort but not the reason for it, pinched his ear. He whined.

 

            “Shush you,” Morris said, managing to make it sound soothing. “So basically I take him home for a few days and bung him back on the train when he hasn’t got a temperature any more?”

 

            Ditzy was starting to look amused. “Give it twenty-four hours until after the temperature has stopped. So basically when he’s eating normally and walking around normally and sulking about not being allowed out to play.”

 

            “I outrank you,” Becker said plaintively.

 

            “Listen to the nice doctor,” Morris said reprovingly, pinching the other ear and cementing her position with the ARC’s soldiers forevermore, if Becker was any judge. “At least, you are a medic, right?”

 

            Ditzy nodded. “Do you want me to help you get him downstairs, miss?”  


            “Call me Morris,” Morris told him. “Seriously, just Morris. And yes, please.”

 

            In the end, Ditzy had to almost carry Becker downstairs, a fact which was only slightly less mortifying than the way he’d got into the flat, which had involved passing out halfway up the stairs and being discovered by Taffy, unable to make it more than a few steps further after coming round. Taffy, who had packed an undoubtedly grossly ill-assorted collection of clothes for Becker, wound up carrying the bag downstairs behind Ditzy and Becker, making scurrilous comments about Becker’s common sense and ability to take care of himself, while Morris walked ahead of them, glancing back over her shoulder regularly to check that Ditzy wasn’t about to overbalance and tumble forward, sending the three of them flying. Becker could have told her there was no particular danger of that; he might be weak as a kitten, but Ditzy had not succumbed to whatever plague the Health and Safety officer, who had been sneezing like a trooper the entire time he toured the ARC, had brought in. Lester was apparently cooking up a demon of a complaint from his own sickbed: he had taken to texting snippets of it to Lyle while he was on duty. Most of it wasn’t printable in a family newspaper, so Becker imagined there was a certain amount of editing to do.

 

            Becker recovered from these hazy recollections to find himself propped up against Morris’s car, with Morris and Taffy squinting at him from far too close. He could feel the amusement radiating off Ditzy, who had a hand on his back to prevent him from sliding backwards and cracking his head on the kerb.

 

            “I don’t think he’s going to vom,” Taffy pronounced, showing all the erudition and articulacy that made him an ornament to his regiment.  “Wrong shade of green.”

           

            Morris made a dubious noise. “I brought a bucket.”

 

            “Good thinking,” Taffy said cordially.

 

            “I don’t need a bucket,” Becker said. Apart from anything else, he hadn’t been able to keep food down for a while; yesterday had been very busy, no time for anything other than snacks grabbed while moving and he’d eaten only sparingly the previous night. It had been the remains of a curry that had been in the fridge for a bit, and when he’d thrown it up mere hours later he had blamed it on the curry and assumed that – since it had now been flushed into the London sewers – all would shortly be well. Even when the thought of breakfast that morning had made his stomach turn over, he had presumed that was just the result of having been ill the night before. He’d only realised something was badly wrong when he’d drunk a cup of coffee and then promptly lost it down the rec room sink, head spinning hideously. Ditzy had sent him straight home. In hindsight, Becker had no bloody idea how he’d managed to catch the correct buses.

 

            Ditzy, Morris and Taffy made identical noises of disbelief. “Get in the car,” Taffy recommended, assisting Ditzy to stuff him into the front seat. “Go home. Get better. And come and see me in Catterick, you twat, this was a useless visit.”

 

            Becker stuck two fingers up at him and received the bucket Morris dumped in his lap with more resignation than grace. But he didn’t miss, in and among the excitement, the flash of surprise and interest on Ditzy’s face, carefully shielded from Taffy, and he didn’t have to think too hard to realise that it was the result of the ARC’s peculiar conviction that he had sprung from nowhere into their midst, like Athena out of the something-or-other, attended only by a parent with a reputation and a secret hairspray formula.

 

            Did Athena have hairspray? Becker couldn’t remember; Morris’s studies in classical archaeology had seeped into his mind only because Morris had got so bored of Romans and Greeks. He didn’t have hairspray, anyway. That was just Connor’s joke.

 

            “I know, right,” he said, directly to Ditzy, “I have friends and a social life, who would have thought.”

 

            The words evidently didn’t come out, or didn’t come out right, because neither Morris nor Taffy reacted to a statement that would otherwise have elicited the strongest suspicion and the detonation of several social time-bombs, as Morris and Taffy dedicated their combined resources to finding out what the hell he’d been talking about. But Ditzy definitely caught some of what he’d meant to convey, or saw something on his face, or even came to the same conclusions that Becker had, because a look of chagrin, followed by amusement, crossed his face.

 

            “Yeah, that’s right,” Becker murmured, as Morris pulled out of her parking place and drove off. “Fuck you. Wanker.”

           

            Morris gave him a weird look, so that had definitely come out correctly.

 

            “I have friends!” Becker explained to her.

 

            Morris braked for a red light, and smoothed his hair softly off his forehead in the thirty seconds of hands-free time available. “Yes, Beck. Yes you do. Lots of friends. Now go to sleep.”

 

            She leaned forward and turned on the little car’s CD player, and her familiar, honey-smooth Midlands voice came trickling out of the speakers.

 

            “Part one. The first age. Of Tuor and his coming to Gondolin. Rían, wife of Huor, dwelt with the people of the House of Hador; but when rumour came to Dor-lómin of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and yet she could hear no news of her lord, she became distraught and wandered forth into the wild alone. There she would have perished, but the Grey-elves came to her aid…”

 

            Becker fell asleep before he could tell her that he thought the _Unfinished Tales_ was overkill. He could just as easily have dozed off to the dulcet sounds of Bilbo Baggins and his unexpected party.

 

            He woke a few times during the journey; they hit bad traffic, and Morris had to drive into the darkness, which he felt obscurely guilty about. They stopped for petrol, and she woke him to give him water. He drifted awake once to find her looking at him with genuine concern, and smiled at her and mumbled something to reassure her. The scenery flashed by too fast; it made him sick to think about it, so he didn’t.

 

            He woke properly to find the car was parked in front of Morris’s house, all the lights ablaze and all the flatmates standing looking down at him.

 

            “I need you to help me get him upstairs,” Morris was saying, “he weighs too much for me to do it alone and he’s too unresponsive, he’ll fall over and I’ll fall over and I, ugh –“

 

            “It’s all right. Just get his stuff inside.” Becker recognised that voice – Steve’s – and he realised, when large hands pulled him out of the car and held him upright, steady, even though his legs were noodles, that Steve must be holding him up alone. “Christ. He does weigh a ton. Come on, mate, let’s get you indoors.”

 

            Becker took a few staggering steps forwards, cursing himself for showing weakness in front of Steve. The single flight of stairs felt like a hellscape, and he could hear Morris and Sarah talking about him with worry as they came indoors, too.

 

            “-Ditzy said just the flu–“

 

            “-made up a campbed-“

 

            “-no, Steve, put him in mine-“

 

            “Lot of chatter,” Steve said conversationally as he eased Becker onto the bed and knelt to fiddle with his shoes.

 

            “Huh,” Becker said, staring at him. One shoe came off his foot, and then the other one. “What.”

 

            Steve chuckled. “Easy, soldier.” He glanced up at Becker through thick dark lashes. “Maybe we’ll do this again some time, with different intentions, when you look less like you want to die.”   

 

            “Mmrgh,” Becker said, took off his own shirt, and crawled into Morris’s familiar-smelling duvet.

 

 

            When Becker woke and staggered downstairs, there was a girl with purple hair in the kitchen.

 

            “Holy shit,” said the girl, staring at his chest.

 

            Becker realised he’d forgotten to put a shirt on, rubbed his hands over his face, and tried to reconstitute his brain so he could deal effectively with the situation. Was this possibly another girlfriend of Sarah’s? She liked women with oddly coloured hair, didn’t she?

 

            “Um, look,” he began, voice rusty from lack of use and sleep. “Uh-“

 

            “Dr Morris!” yelled the girl, making Becker’s head pound. He whimpered and covered his ears instinctively. “Your friend is awake. And _hot_.”

 

            “And _gay_ ,” Morris said repressively, sweeping into the kitchen with a laptop under one arm. “Here’s your data, Chloe, ogle that instead of my poor Beck.”

 

            Becker blinked down at her, vaguely aware that she was trying to assess how well he was, asking him questions he could hardly answer coherently and holding the back of her hand against his forehead.

 

            “Yeah,” she said decisively, shaking her head, blonde sandy fringe going everywhere. “No. You’re fevered and you look like hell. Chloe, I question your taste in men. Beck, go back to bed, I’ll bring you something to eat later.”

 

            “Okay,” Becker said, and turned and went.

 

            “He’s very docile,” Chloe said approvingly.

 

            “I have him well-trained,” Morris replied. “Now, about this survey…”

 

            It took him several minutes to make it up the stairs again. Down had been much easier. He sat down at one point and shut his eyes, and when he opened them again he was in Morris’s bed again, duvet tucked snugly around him. He didn’t know how that had happened. Frankly, he wished it would happen more often; it would make his life easier if he could close his eyes and wish he was somewhere else, and have his wish come true.

 

            Becker smiled in his sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

            The next time he woke, someone was sitting next to him, shaking his shoulder gently and repeating his name. He blinked and focussed, realised that the person was neither Morris nor any of his colleagues, and sat bolt upright. His head swam.

 

            Steve smiled wryly. “You don’t look well, mate.”  


            “I feel worse,” Becker croaked, dimly mortified that he was in this state in front of Steve. But then again, Steve had practically carried him inside when he first got here, so it was all a bit of a lost cause by now.

 

            “I bet.” Steve handed him a glass of water and two small white tablets. “Morris said to give you these before she drove Sarah and Chloe into town.”

 

            Becker accepted the tablets and knocked them back, ruthlessly controlling a stomach that was bound and determined to eject them again. He sipped slowly at the water, and waited for things to calm down. When they had done, he set the glass aside and asked: “Who’s Chloe?”

 

            “Archaeology Master’s student,” Steve said. “Morris was a TA on her undergrad course – they did a module on Saxons and Britons. I was there when Chloe discovered Morris was at Exeter too. She almost tackled her into a fishpond.”

 

            This was very nearly comprehensible to Becker. “Oh. Okay.”

 

            “That’s Chloe for you.” Steve got up. “Go back to sleep. And don’t come back downstairs again until you can get back up yourself.”

 

            Several pieces fell into place, and Becker felt insubstantial snippets of memory knitting themselves to the edges of this new picture. “You carried me up.”

 

            Steve nodded.

 

            Becker remembered something else, and grinned. “You groped my arse.”

 

            A dull flush arose on Steve’s high cheekbones. “By accident. Sorry.”

 

            “I really don’t mind,” Becker assured him. “It’s a nice arse. It’s always nice to be appreciated.”

 

            A smirk slipped onto Steve’s face. “It is.” He reached out and pushed gently down on Becker’s head; Becker slid down under the duvet, as he was clearly expected to. “Go back to sleep, soldier boy.”

 

            “Don’t call me that,” Becker murmured, already halfway gone. The last thing he heard before he fell asleep was Steve’s quiet laughter.

 

 

            “I think I might just poke him until he wakes up,” someone was saying thoughtfully. “Wakey, wakey, rise and –“

 

            Becker waited for the fourth poke to land on the centre of his chest and then lashed out for the hand responsible. The someone’s sentence ended in a squeak, and Becker found himself with a handful of slender wrist.

 

            “See, I told you that was a stupid idea, and you didn’t listen,” Morris sighed, her voice honey-warm and familiar. “Come on, Becker, let the silly woman go.”

 

            Gathering that the someone wasn’t a person he needed to worry about, Becker loosened his grip at once and dragged a pillow over his head. It was removed.

 

            “No, come on,” Morris said firmly. “I’m not making you get up, but you need to eat.”

 

            “I feel better, actually,” Becker informed her, opening his eyes, since there didn’t seem to be any help for it. He focussed on Sarah, who was now several steps away from the bed, looking sheepish. “Sorry about that. Don’t poke me.”

 

            “Message received and understood,” Sarah said, almost seriously. She went out into the hall and came back with a tray of food. “I cooked. Well, Steve cooked, I burnt the toast.”

 

            “We thought a fry-up would fit the bill,” Morris said. “Only eat as much as you want, okay?”

 

            “Yeah, sure,” Becker said, sitting up and receiving the tray. He smiled at Sarah, who smiled back. “Have you already eaten?”

 

            Morris removed a mug of tea and a plate with sliced tomatoes and an immense bacon butty from the tray. “No.” She settled herself cross-legged on the floor. “I’m staying here with you, Steve has eaten and gone out for a run, and Sarah is supposed to be Skyping Leah in Belize so Leah doesn’t forget how to speak English.”

             

            “It’s not that she forgets,” Sarah elaborated, “she just speaks English with Spanish grammar and it’s very confusing. So I’ll see you later.” She waved a hand in Becker and Morris’s direction and left.

 

            Becker applied himself to his tea.

 

            They didn’t talk this time; Becker wasn’t really up to it. He could feel himself knitting back together, the pieces of him that had split apart under the fever pulling back together, but he was still fairly out of it. Morris read a book instead.

 

            “You and Steve,” she said at one point, chewing and swallowing a mouthful of bacon and bun. “Is that a thing now?”

 

            “What kind of a thing?” Becker asked.

 

            Morris stared at him over her glasses. Obedient to suggestion, Becker actually thought the question through.

 

            “Yes, a thing,” he said slowly. “But not a serious thing.”

 

            “Okay,” Morris said peaceably. “Cool. It’s just, you know, he never talks about anyone in his life. But sometimes he stops, like he might be about to.”  


            Becker thought about the few real conversations he’d had with Steve, and matched Morris’s casual remarks up to the ghosts of Steve’s half-spoken secrets. “I don’t think I’m the first gay soldier he’s met.”

 

            “No,” Morris murmured. “I don’t think you are either.”

 

            Their eyes were locked. Becker read _be careful_ out of Morris’s, but had no idea what she was getting from his own.

 

            “Yeah,” he said, apropos of nothing. “I need a shower.”

 

            “Yeah,” Morris echoed. “You really do.”

           

             

            Steve got back from his run just as Becker was leaving the bathroom, towel wrapped carelessly around his hips. Becker knew this because he almost walked straight into Steve and dropped his towel. Regaining his grip on the damn thing, he smiled at Steve, who smiled back.

 

            “You look better,” Steve remarked, sounding genuinely pleased.

 

            “I feel much better,” Becker assured him. “Thanks for your help, earlier.”

 

            “It was nothing,” Steve said dismissively. “When do you have to go back?”

 

            “In a couple of days, maybe,” Becker said. He’d called Ditzy before climbing into the shower and had been told, in no uncertain terms, to stay away till Monday, since people were still getting sick and Ditzy had had enough of throwing the various victims of the illness out of their workplaces. “Morris is being cautious. So is Ditzy.”

 

            Something flickered in Steve’s blue eyes – or at least, Becker thought it did. “Who’s Ditzy?”

 

            “A friend of mine,” Becker said. “A medic.”

 

            “Oh,” Steve said. Was it Becker’s imagination, or was his smile a little less bright, his eyes a little more troubled? He got a faint sinking feeling.

 

            Becker let it go, or tried to. He was probably imagining things. There was nothing wrong with Steve’s face – or any of the rest of him, by the looks of things. He went back into the bedroom to dress, found Morris changing the sheets on her bed, and indulged in an episode of childish bickering with her that left them both feeling much better, and drove the topic of Steve’s secrets entirely out of Becker’s mind for the moment.

 

            Which was only right and proper. Becker knew a problem he couldn’t fix when he saw one.

 

           

            “…Yes, sir.” A pause, in which Becker poured the contents of the kettle into the cafetière and fitted the lid on. “No. Definitely not.” Another pause, and Becker was hyper-aware of Steve at the table behind him, pointedly not staring at him and almost certainly listening in to his conversation with Ryan. “No. Thank you. I’ll see you on Monday.”

 

            He cut the call and put the phone down on the kitchen worktop, then pressed down on the top of the cafetière, smooth and efficient and not too fast, so that the coffee actually brewed properly and none of the grounds snuck through the filter. “Coffee’s up,” he said, with deliberate casualness, and reached for two mugs.

 

            “Thanks,” Steve said, and – to Becker’s considerable surprise – joined him, pouring two mugs of coffee. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.”

 

            The back of Becker’s neck prickled. It was as good a sign that he was in some variety of trouble as any, even though he suspected that (this time) Steve was just trying to let him down gently. “Oh yeah?” he said neutrally.

 

            “I don’t have a problem with your job.”

 

            Becker turned and looked at Steve. They were standing right next to each other, less than an inch of empty air between them, and Becker could practically feel Steve’s body heat. Steve was slightly taller than he was – a couple of inches, maybe; Becker registered, with a slight shock, that he had to look up a little to look into Steve’s eyes.

 

            “It’s just that some of the…” Steve broke off and shook his head. “I think you may know some people I used to know. From a place I can’t go back to. Don’t ask me to.”

 

            Becker stayed perfectly still for a second, his earlier sinking feeling returning full force and more leaden than ever. _Surely_ not. “I wasn’t going to,” he said eventually, breaking away and taking his coffee with him. He still felt vaguely weak at the knees when he stood upright for too long, and he was sure it had nothing to do with Steve’s presence; but he needed to nip this in the bud and make it clear to Steve that Steve’s sordid past was of no interest to him before things got awkward. “For what it’s worth, Steve, I know who you are.”

 

            “Oh yeah?” Steve said, and it was his turn not to move, or to meet Becker’s eyes.

 

            Becker nodded, and gulped at his coffee. It was hot, and burnt on the way down; he welcomed the contrast even as he heard Morris’s voice in the back of his mind, scolding him. “You’re Steve. My best friend’s housemate. I don’t know if you used to know anyone I’m acquainted with now, Steve, and I don’t _care_. It’s not relevant. This is the only place I ever expect to find you. I’m not asking you to go anywhere. Let alone back to somewhere that clearly scares you shitless for some reason.”

 

            Steve’s eyebrows shot up, but his mouth also quirked to one side, so Becker thought he was okay. He noticed, however, that Steve didn’t query the ‘scared shitless’ remark, and thought that tacit admission was another lead weight to attach to his sinking feeling. “Fair enough,” Steve said.

 

            “Speaking of housemates, why aren’t you telling Morris or Sarah this?” Becker demanded, gesturing illustratively with his mug. “You must know them better than I do. And look, Morris collects angsty gay men with tragic pasts. Whatever’s happened…”

 

            Steve was half-laughing, and shaking his head. “You’re… bloody hell, Becker. You’re still ill and you’ve somehow removed the posh English public school stick from up your arse and are going on about how I should confide in your best friend and giving motivational speeches? Are you always this outspoken when you’re sick?”

 

            “I’m fine. Resilient. I bounce back.” Becker put his mug on the table. “And you find my arse pretty interesting, don’t you.”

 

            It wasn’t a question, and if Morris were anywhere near here, instead of lying on the floor of her bedroom with her iPod in her ears staring at the ceiling and thinking hard about her latest research project, she would have groaned and hit him with a tea-towel for his lack of subtlety (and then fled the room, just in case more than one of her housemates had a predilection for defiling kitchen tables).

 

            “I do,” Steve confirmed, looking slightly surprised. “But you’re sick.”

 

            “I’m not contagious,” Becker said, with absolute confidence. He was less confident about whether he’d be able to get back upstairs without limping like an old grandfather and clutching the banister, but did that matter when there were several perfectly good sofas down here and he wasn’t proposing anything complex?

 

            “You’re _hitting_ on me.”

 

            “You’re not as smart as you look, are you.”

 

            A look of bitterness flashed across Steve’s face. “I know. Dim but pretty.”

 

            “No, just oblivious,” Becker said, feeling a sharp burst of sympathy and a profound desire to get that expression off Steve’s face. So he came round the table and kissed Steve, which did the job admirably.

 

            Morris wandered back downstairs forty minutes later, head evidently in the clouds, and made it all the way to the kitchen sink to water the pot-plants on the kitchen windowsill before realising that Steve and Becker were in a compromising position. She turned around, the better to work out exactly what had been happening, and blinked hard a couple of times.

 

            “You put on the wrong shirts,” she said.

 

            “What?” Steve said, and rubbed at a lovebite Becker had left where the shirt in question wouldn’t cover it.

 

            “I mean, I appreciate the effort to make yourselves decent, but. You’re wearing Beck’s shirt. He’s wearing yours.” She turned around again, paying particular attention to a wilting pot of basil, and Steve and Becker swapped shirts behind her back. “Steve?”

 

            “Yeah?”  


            “Since he’s sick, you’re disinfecting the table.”

 

           

            Morris kept her pin-boards in her room. The ones with their friends from Oxford and her friends from Durham were on the wall, as was the one with his friends from the army. The one from her PhD studentship had been ceremoniously burnt, Morris laughing and crying and dousing it with petrol as Taffy and Smithy stood well back and Becker struck a match, and the few friends she had chosen to hang on to had been transferred to the Exeter board. The Exeter board was inside Morris’s wardrobe. Becker knew because he had hung it there.

 

            The problem with Morris’s boards – or their great virtue, depending on who you asked – was that she was always completely honest on them. Which was why Morris’s last board had had to be burnt, and why Taffy and Smithy had had to be sworn to secrecy. Becker sought out the Exeter board the day he left, just before Morris was due to take him to the station; he found the entry on Steve easily enough, since his picture was attached to it. He skimmed past every entry to the one that read _Known associates_ , and skipped past names of people he didn’t know until he reached his own. Half of the note beside it had been written in black biro, and the other half in blue; Morris had broken her last black biro over the weekend.

 

            _Friends_ , read the black half. _With benefits_ , read the blue.

 

            Becker absorbed this, and then went back to the name at the top.

 

            _Steve Hart_ , it said, in Morris’s handwriting.

 

            “Jesus,” Becker said softly, that sinking feeling solidifying into unpleasant reality. “Jesus _fucking_ Christ.”


	6. Chapter 6

            Becker had plenty of time to think on the train home, and in the evening, eating pasta out of the saucepan because he hadn’t done any washing up for a week and couldn’t be bothered to find clean plates, mind occupied by the problem now facing him. He talked absent-mindedly to Morris on his way to work, chatting over the hands-free as he negotiated the winding route to the ARC’s underground garage and clearing his brain of any references to Steve – who was looking increasingly like _Stephen_ – Hart. He deliberately didn’t allude to it, since Morris could keep a secret, but was bad at hiding anxiety. And she would worry about Steve.

 

            Fuck, _Becker_ was worrying about Steve. He’d spent a couple of days flirting and kissing him, spent one night in his bed – not because they’d been up to anything particularly strenuous, Steve was both slightly skittish and fixated on Becker’s health, but because they had agreed that Sarah and Morris would kill them if they ran the shower at gone midnight, and Becker absolutely refused to climb back into Morris’s bed smelling of sex. So Becker had slept beside Steve, and Becker was not a heavy sleeper in the ordinary way of things, so he knew that Steve tossed and turned and muttered in his sleep. It was never anything that tied him directly to the ARC, but it spoke of a lot of guilt and misery, enough to drive him away from the job and friends that had been Stephen Hart’s only known anchors. Unfortunately, Becker was pretending to sleep and Steve did not snuggle, so Becker could neither offer him physical comfort nor pour alcohol down his throat, and Becker lacked the emotional literacy to find another way to comfort him.

 

            He was a bloke, Becker assured himself. He wasn’t supposed to have that much emotional literacy.

 

            In his head, Morris smacked him for being an idiot. Becker winced and parked his car very slowly and carefully. Okay, so he simply didn’t know a way to help Steve, because it wasn’t in his personal vocabulary.

 

            It wasn’t just Steve’s evident bad dreams, though. It was the skittishness, the silence, the obvious wariness. If Steve didn’t know he worked for the ARC, he’d soon work it out. Becker wasn’t sure what he’d do then. Steve hadn’t asked him any questions or requested his silence. Steve hadn’t asked him for anything at all.

 

            Disturbed, Becker climbed out of the car and trod up into the main ARC in enough of a daze that Ditzy cornered him and demanded to know how he was feeling.

 

            “Fine,” Becker told Ditzy, evading him with more haste than skill, “Just fine, no longer throwing up, completely able to walk up stairs on my own.”

 

            “Good,” Ditzy said suspiciously, watching him go. Becker felt those brown eyes boring holes in the back of his neck, and wondered what the hell he could do now.

 

            Stephen Hart was alive, and Becker knew where he was – information most of the team would be thrilled to get out of him. Information Ryan might conceivably kill for. Becker instantly resolved that there would be no honourable funny business about keeping Stephen’s secret in the face of all comers, and spent the next ten minutes thinking of all the reasons why Ryan would not think to ask him about Stephen, let alone that Becker had slept with the man. Twice.

 

            It was a nice, quiet day at work, calculated to soothe the nerves of a returning officer with deep suspicions as to his charges’ activities in his absence. Sure enough, Miss Wickes summoned him for coffee and gave him a concise summary of Cutter’s more than usually disastrous behaviour, Abby and Connor’s latest row over the washing up spilling over into the work-day, the anomaly detector’s misadventures, and Danny getting stuck in three different air vents. Jenny had apparently taken to leaving information on diets on his desk and tucked into his locker, which Becker thought was a bit harsh for the five seconds it took for Miss Wickes to explain that this was retaliation for Danny’s carelessness playing merry hell with Jenny’s attempts to keep the press in line and causing a major setback.

 

            He spent the rest of the day catching up on paperwork, which included stock-taking in the armoury – a tedious job, but when his nose was forced to the grindstone Becker was always good at getting through the routine detail - and renewing the civilians’ firearm certifications. The former was supposed to take a lot longer than the latter, but then, Professor Cutter was involved. Becker wasn’t really surprised when he found that Abby (respectably accurate and sensible, an easy pass), Danny (very good, aced his requalification), Jenny (reasonably skilled, another easy pass) and Connor (who had signed up for remedial lessons in advance and therefore triumphantly scraped a pass) had all been through the range and gone for hours and he had only just managed to coax Cutter into loading a gun. He thought longingly of the completed stock-taking, of the days of Ryan thumping Cutter around the head to get him to cooperate – a method Becker was more than willing to emulate, but felt wouldn’t get him anywhere – and of smart, sensible people like Miss Wickes who was practising her horrifically well-honed skills at the other end of the range. If only Cutter practised like she did.

 

            Cantankerous as ever, Cutter demanded to know whether he could now get this over with. Becker bit his tongue on a sarcastic answer and nodded, praying that Cutter wouldn’t also need remedial lessons. Working with Connor and Abby was fine, pleasant even; they wanted to get better and they both liked to learn as much as they liked to teach, and they listened to advice and sometimes even put it into practice in the field. Provided he turned up at their office doors and held them to the times they had assigned themselves, they completed their lessons and did reasonably well. Becker somehow felt that Cutter would be an entirely different kettle of sharks.

 

            Cutter passed by the skin of his teeth. Becker issued several prayers in the general direction of a merciful higher being he hadn’t really believed in since his stint as the world’s most reluctant altar boy, stuffed the gun back into Cutter’s hands when Cutter shoved it at him, and reminded Cutter that signing his own weapons in and accounting for his ammunition was part of the test. This got him a look of irritable scorn which he paid absolutely no attention to, and the grumpy returning of the weapon to its proper place. Ryan was waiting outside, had been watching for at least the last ten minutes – that was when the hair on the back of Becker’s neck had started to rise, anyway, and Becker had caught a glimpse of Miss Wickes stopping to greet someone as she left the armoury – and congratulated Cutter on his pass. Cutter managed to say something reasonably gracious in response and then hurried away, laser focus once more concentrated on his precious research.

 

            For the first and very likely the last time, Ryan and Becker shared a look of perfect understanding. Mostly what it perfectly understood was the fact that Becker wanted to smack Cutter around the head with the butt of a handgun as much as Ryan had done back in the Permian, all those years ago, and that this was a completely valid desire in the circumstances.

 

            “He’s a stubborn sod,” Ryan remarked. “And he doesn’t like guns.”

 

            “Yeah,” Becker sighed, and rubbed a hand over his face. “At least he passed.”

 

            Ryan cracked a smile. “I would have taken him off your hands if he hadn’t done.” The smile turned evil. “Light relief from paperwork.”  


            Becker considered the specimens of Cutter-handling he had seen Ryan demonstrate, and grinned. “I would have paid good money to see that, sir.”

 

            “How did the others do?”

 

            “Well,” Becker said judiciously. “Danny and Jenny both did very well, but that wasn’t a surprise. Jenny says she wants to keep her lessons up anyway, Danny continues to be an arrogant sod about his safety measures and I was tempted to fail him just for that. Abby passed. Connor passed –“

 

            Ryan raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in a soundless whistle of appreciation.

 

            “I know,” Becker said, justifiably proud of his teaching skills. “And Danny did actually pass, of course. I can’t tell if he felt the need to be a twat about it or not, I was still getting through the others and I haven’t seen him since.”

 

            “He mocked Jenny a bit,” Ryan said. “She countered with some gently patronising remarks about his motorbike.”

 

            Becker couldn’t hide a smirk.

 

            Ryan looked around them. “You done here, then?”

 

            “Yessir,” Becker said, and then “Oh, no, wait a second,” as he remembered that he had not signed his own handgun back in. Waiting for Cutter to turn up had been very boring, and he had eventually decided to practise until Cutter arrived: although this had fallen through and he had had to hunt Cutter down, he had still got in some practice. He went and put the damn thing back and accounted for his ammunition rather loosely, then turned to Ryan, who was on the other side of the armoury, hand resting lightly on a long plastic case Becker and Finn had unearthed – one tranquiliser rifle, the only one of the three the ARC owned that had not been used in the last few months. The case was dusty; Ryan wiped his fingers on his trousers absently as he took his hand away and looked back at Becker.

 

            “It works fine,” Becker said. “Nobody uses it, though.”

 

            “It was Hart’s,” Ryan said evenly. “That’s why.”

 

            Becker forced himself to remain nonchalant as they strolled towards the changing room. “He had a preference for a particular rifle?”  


            “First rifle we acquired, he hung onto it.”  They took a sharp left into the changing rooms. “Want to go for a drink? I think everyone else went to the Ship.”

 

            “Great,” Becker said, hoping the topic of Stephen Hart would be dropped in the face of (at the very least) Abby and Connor’s presence. “I need one after that.”

 

            It transpired that the ARC team had not gone to the Ship, but the Black Swan; Ryan said he couldn’t be arsed to move there, and Becker somewhat wearily agreed. Ryan evidently picked up on the fact that he was tired, and cast him a look that might almost have been interpreted as concern. “You all right? Ditzy said you looked a bit out of it this morning.”

 

            “Fine,” Becker said hastily, and ordered a drink to prove it. “I’m over the flu from hell, or whatever it was. I’m just tired.”  


            “Ditzy said you’d been properly ill,” Ryan remarked. “Something about one of your mates having to carry you upstairs?”  


            Becker rolled his eyes. “Taffy chose a good time to visit, yes. I would have got up the stairs eventually.”

 

            There was a short, surprisingly companionable silence while they waited for their drinks and  then selected a couple of comfortable corner seats. Becker said nothing, since Ryan was staring into mid-air and didn’t seem inclined to talk. He just let himself drift for a few minutes; he didn’t know Ryan well enough to remark on the football or the rugby or anything, and he felt unequal to even the most basic discussion of politics.

 

            “You would have liked Hart,” Ryan said unexpectedly.

 

            Becker was somewhat startled, but perfectly willing to agree with this. Ryan didn’t have to know it was true.

 

            “He’s a good guy, wherever the hell he’s gone to,” Ryan further stated.

 

            Becker made an appropriately sober noise and made no reference to the fact that Hart had transposed himself to Exeter. “Nobody’s heard from him? Still?”

 

            Ryan shook his head, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “You’d have heard if they had. The only one who’d be able to keep it quiet is Abby – and she’d tell Connor and god knows the lad would come straight out with it.” There was a brief pause. “Maybe Lester. But there’s fuck all reason for Hart to have spoken to Lester.”  


            “Did he have close friends here?” Becker hazarded. “Apart from, well, Cutter?”  


            “Connor. Abby, sort of.” Ryan took a large gulp of his drink and set it down a bit too hard. “Me.”

 

            Becker stayed very, very still and telegraphed honesty and just a little shortage of understanding. There was something angry at the back of Ryan’s eyes that he did not want to be on the receiving end of, and there was no possible way Ryan could know he’d slept with Stephen last weekend. (Twice, his treacherous brain reminded him.) “Think he’ll come back?” he said quietly, after a suitable pause, trying to emanate sincerity and just enough sympathy to be nice without being patronising.

 

            Ryan shook his head. “The team talk like he’s dead, except for Connor. That’s probably what he wants – to be well out of here. I can’t blame him.”

 

            _But you do_ , Becker wanted to say, along with _I’ve met him and he needs someone who knows him, like you, because there’s something wrong there_. Since he wanted to keep his head on his shoulders, he said neither – just nodded gravely, waited a few beats while Ryan stared into his drink, and changed the subject.


	7. Chapter 7

            Becker was getting excitingly close to beating Joel Stringer at poker, which would have been a nice boost to his imminent week-end, when the anomaly detector went off.

 

            “Fucksticks,” Stringer said briefly, and dropped his cards face-down as he rose to his feet. “All right, which den of hell is it this time?”

 

            Becker stuffed his own hand into his pocket and jumped up, trying to bring to mind the several obscure corners of the ARC to which the team would have scattered and hoping Quinn hadn’t got stuck in the ventilation shafts again; if he had done, Becker was just going to leave the sod behind. He trotted briskly out into the atrium and seized Connor, who was, obedient to training, already on his feet and heading for the car park. “Where is it, Connor?”

 

            “Exeter,” Connor said with commendable aplomb considering Becker had grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. “In the university campus itself, I think. It’s Friday afternoon so it shouldn’t be too busy but I need to get Jenny, she’s on the firing range with Miss Wickes –“

 

            _Exeter, in the university campus itself_. Becker felt a cold hand take gentle hold of the base of his spine and tug, and then heard a yelp from Connor. His hand had twisted involuntarily, tightening the grip on Connor’s collar in an actively dangerous fashion. Consciously, Becker loosened it. “Go straight to the car park. I’ll get Miss Lewis.”

 

            He was not entirely sure how he got from the atrium to the car park, but the next thing he knew he was there, armed to the teeth and being stared at by the other people as he buckled his seat-belt in. Connor looked alarmed, Miss Lewis looked faintly outraged, Abby looked a funny mix of nonplussed and annoyed, and Kermit in the driving seat…

 

            Kermit was only flicking him occasional semi-casual glances as he pulled the car out of the ARC and swung it onto the road, but he looked as if he were rapidly reassessing his idea of Becker’s personality, possibly with an eye to changing his ranking in the ARC’s internal list of crazies. Becker had no problem with this at all.

 

            They got onto the main road in about two and a half minutes, and Becker read signs for the south-west and felt something settle in him slightly. He went through his pockets and was not surprised to find his phone in the same one he always kept it in, securely zipped inside. He speed-dialled Morris and held his phone to his ear, waiting. She didn’t pick up. He took a deep breath, held it for a count of five and let it slowly out: if Morris were teaching or working in the forge, she would not have her phone too close by or be paying attention to it. He started to type a text message.

 

            “Any information on the anomaly?” he asked, striving to keep his voice calm and level.

 

            Connor was flipping through internet pages on his phone (top-of-the-range, office-issued, attached to him by an elastic bracelet at all times when anywhere near an anomaly on pain of Lester). He raised his head, and Becker saw tension in those big brown eyes reflected in the rear-view mirror. “Nothing. The ADD suggested it was a pretty strong, regular one, and fairly big, too, but that’s it. There’s nothing on the news or anything so it’s probably not let out anything _massive_ …”

 

            There were a lot of things that didn’t need to be massive to do damage, and Connor didn’t sound very certain. Jenny bit down on her perfectly glossed lower lip and pulled out her own phone to call the university. They all listened for a few tense minutes while Jenny burnt through layers of academic bureaucracy and finally fetched up at the head of security, who agreed to lock down the campus with surprisingly little argument, enough to make Abby give Jenny a questioning look.

 

            “He had a Forest of Dean accent,” Jenny said, and shrugged.

 

            “Explains more than it doesn’t,” Abby muttered, accurately. The locals in the Forest of Dean had a truly admirable attitude to anomalies and the chaos that attended them: they got indoors, stayed indoors, trapped any creatures they could, and provided endless cups of tea for the ARC team when they turned up to mop up the mess. There was a philosophical point to be made there about the resilience of humankind, but Becker didn’t propose to try.

 

            He finally sent Morris his text ( _Security risk on campus. Get inside stay inside lock your doors call me if you see or hear ANYTHING. Keep safe_ ) and glanced in the rear view mirror. Two other Jeeps full of ARC personnel were following closely. Good.

 

            “Kermit,” he said without looking up. “How fast can you get to Exeter?”

 

            Kermit changed up three gears at once, and the engine roared underneath them. “Very, sir.”

 

            Becker leaned forward and flicked on the newly-installed blue lights. Kermit was going to have his hands full driving, and Becker was not in the mood to worry about the police.

 

            “I might be sick,” Connor ventured, as Kermit overtook a minibus with unnecessary enthusiasm.

 

            Becker reached into the glovebox and passed him a plastic bag.

 

 

            It was not difficult to track down the anomaly; the head of security, an intelligent man called Don Griffiths, had identified a sleepy postgraduate student’s remarks about ‘funny glittery thing, over there, by the bike shed’ with the ‘anything peculiar’ Jenny had asked him to report on at once. He had had a man watching it from a window since it had discovered.

 

            Unfortunately, he declared himself completely unable to rid campus of the small flock of raptor-type things that had come through the anomaly. Becker did not blame him in the slightest. It was high summer, and even the afternoon light was glaring: Becker put on his sunglasses, loaded his Mossberg and automatically suppressed the shiver of anxiety that complained that Morris had not called him back, replacing his worries about her with his worries about the team. Danny had a healthy distaste for raptors of all shapes and sorts, and was happy enough to stay behind with Jenny, where he drew on decades of police experience to ward off excessively curious students and Jenny called on her PR skills to deflect reporters. There were not that many of either, since Griffiths had instituted a complete lockdown on all buildings and was busily refusing entry to any journalists who turned up. Jenny had been heard to thank God that the anomaly was in such a controlled area, but this was not improving Becker’s temper: he knew that the archaeology department and the forge in which Morris attempted to construct period-appropriate weaponry and then test it to destruction were both based on Streatham Campus.

 

            But he had no time to worry about that now. He collected the group of four who were now acting as Connor and Abby’s minders, and they started to head towards the anomaly while two other groups began to clear the area around buildings – clearing the buildings themselves would take too much time right now, there were too many of them, and it was likely that the raptors had not actually got inside yet, even though they’d had about three and a half hours to do so. Becker hoped that Connor’s expert judgement would say that the raptors they had on their hands were one of the smaller and less dangerous sort, or that Abby would be able to declare that they were juveniles and inept hunters. But he knew that that was unlikely, so he concentrated on keeping Connor well back and keeping a sharp eye out for any stray raptors. So far as they knew there was only one cohesive flock knocking about the place, and Becker could hear in his earpiece the sounds of the first team of sweepers engaging it, but it never paid to be hopeful like that.

 

            Lyle was describing the raptors for Connor. Since he was doing so in between bursts of automatic fire, and since his descriptions were heavy on the swearwords and low on the identifying details, Connor was having some difficulty reaching an identification on that basis, and he was just asking Lyle for clarification when Barratt gave a sharp intake of breath.

 

            “What is it?” Becker demanded.

 

            Barratt pointed at the ground – a flowerbed, softer than the hard-packed and slightly mangy-looking lawn, possibly because fewer students had been treading on it, with a suspiciously-shaped dent in it. “Bloody great footprint, sir.” Then he raised his pointing hand, and indicated a door in the building just ahead of them. “And that, sir.”

 

            The door was a fire-door, heavy and dark with emergency exit signs and the push-to-open bar visible, and it was wide open. Next to it was a fire extinguisher, lying useless and punctured on the ground. Somebody must have kept it propped open for some reason, and by hideous luck when the raptors got at it they pushed it open instead of causing it to swing shut. Becker caught a glimpse of the sign out the front of the building, and his heart thumped double-time.

 

            _Laver Building. Department of Archaeology_.

             

            “Connor, what can you get from the flowerbeds?” Becker said tightly, touching his phone in its pocket almost unconsciously. It had not buzzed; Morris had not answered. Don’t think about Morris, fuck, don’t think about Morris, she’s a big girl and you warned her and she can look after herself…

 

            Connor shot him a somewhat dubious look from under a fringe that was, once again, getting a bit overgrown, and knelt to examine it. “Not much,” he concluded, standing up again. “Except there’s at least two of them, and they’ve got nasty claws, and they’re pretty big. Doesn’t really get us any further. Sorry, mate.”

 

            A woman’s thin, high scream echoed from the building. There was a horrible, still split second that felt like it lasted forever, and then the world felt like a crystal jigsaw, almost invisible, had fallen into place around Becker’s ears; he knew exactly what to do next. “Wilkes, Harrison, take Miss Maitland and Mr Temple back to the cars and shoot anything that looks at you funny. Adey, Barratt, you’re with me.”

 

            “They don’t like enclosed spaces,” Abby volunteered, ice eyes unreadable. “None of the raptors we’ve come across do. They operate in them, but they panic more easily and that makes them more dangerous. And anything with a footprint that size will be at least two metres at the shoulder.”

 

            Slightly surprised by the information, Becker looked at Connor in case he had more to volunteer. He wasn’t really expecting it – the man was excellent at identifying creatures and terrible at predicting their behaviour – but if Abby was giving him advice on how to engage with creatures with the purpose of killing them, then anything might happen.

 

            Connor shrugged. “Mind the claws? No, seriously, mate. Mind the claws.”  


            Becker almost laughed, and then he and Adey and Barratt had split off from the main group and he was talking into his earpiece, telling Lyle and Stringer what had just happened, advising them of Abby and Connor’s current whereabouts, and trying not to call out for Morris. The corridor looked strangely untouched, except for some scratches in the floor that were probably the result of the raptors’ claws, and it was eerily silent. Becker thought, from the width of the corridor and the number of doors and corridors leading off it, that it must run the breadth of the building, and thanked God for a logical building pattern.

 

            They cleared room after room after room after room, most of them curiously empty: there must have been very few students around, and most of these rooms looked as if they were ready for people to expand into them, sparsely furnished or not at all. Almost all of the three bodies Becker, Adey and Barratt found were closer to the wide corridor, as if they had heard the noise and wondered what was happening, and had terminally found out. One boy, face down in a puddle of blood, still had his headphones in. The only one who wasn’t in the corridor lay in the centre of an empty seminar room, split almost neatly almost in half from neck to hip, and there were footprints in her blood, human as well as raptor, footprints that, as the blood adhered to the floor instead of the people’s shoes, trailed off at a run. So somebody had found the body and left alive – that was heartening, particularly considering that they found no more bodies, only overturned desks and papers fluttering in the wind, computers in sleep mode or cycling through endless screensavers. Jackets were still on pegs, doors hung open. Most people who had been in this building had evidently run. Perhaps the woman on the floor of the seminar room had been the screamer Becker had heard, in which case the students and staff – however few of them were present – must either have locked themselves in a lab or coffee room to protect themselves, or have left the building in a hurry, in which case Lyle and company would probably find them when they came after Becker.

 

            Becker hoped they would not also find the raptors.

 

            There was a buzzing in his earpiece, and then Connor came on the line. “I’m looking at the body of one of the raptors and it’s a velociraptor,” he announced, curiously solemn, carefully scientific. “The main group hunts together, but we’ve seen young males of this and similar species separate from the group to hunt alone or in pairs. The raptors in the archaeology department probably fit this description. Also, Abby says those young males are particularly aggressive. Over.”

 

            Becker got on the radio to thank him for the information and summarise what they had and had not found, and then they came to a large fire door with safety glass in, that led into another wide corridor. Barratt glanced back at Becker, who nodded, and Barratt then pushed it open and the three of them burst into the corridor.

 

            A raptor, at least two and a half metres at the shoulder, greeted them with the usual unearthly chicken from hell squawk and Becker yelled “ _Contact_!” and shot at it. The raptor danced in place, small head with its oversized eyes weaving as it tried to choose between its new targets, and the bullets shredded a poster on Egyptology instead. Becker sent Sarah a mental apology as he dived to one side and fired again, this time aiming to cut the feet from under the fucking thing because it was too bloody mobile, a flash of bright feathers snapping and darting for Adey, who was doing an excellent job of never being in the same place for two seconds together but would eventually get caught. Barratt copied him, and then the raptor was on the floor and Adey was jumping off a small cupboard that was creaking beneath his weight, and all three of them were pouring bullets into its centre mass.

 

            Raptors were easy to kill, lacking the armour or the sheer mass of some of the other things they’d gone after, but only if you got them to stand still for long enough. Becker lowered his shotgun for a second and took a step back while he watched the thing thrash and Barratt called in the kill. He took a deep breath and then another, adrenaline lighting his every nerve afire.

 

            The raptor – velociraptor, Becker supposed now he had half a moment to think about it – kicked out in its death throes, and Becker moved but he wasn’t fast enough. Its claw dug and ripped deep into the flesh of his thigh, and Becker screamed and put four unnecessary shots through its head in quick succession, and then there was a horrible almost-silence, a collective catching of breath, in which the only sounds were the blood pouring from Becker and from the velociraptor.

 

            The blood was pouring a lot faster from Becker than the velociraptor, most probably because Becker was still alive, but Becker was aware that that was probably going to change within the next ten minutes. He clapped a hand to the wound, swore, and reached out with a hand already full of weapon to balance against the wall and make it easier to get to the floor without actually falling. There were still civilians in the building and one raptor unaccounted for, and he was going to be fuck-all use dealing with the problem. Those civilians included Sarah and – selfishly, more importantly – Morris.

 

            “Go,” Becker hissed at Barratt and Adey as he sank to the floor, cursing as he actually hit the ground and a jolt of agony went through his leg. “Go, get out of here, get the civilians out and _go_.” He reloaded his shotgun with fingers that did not shake.

 

            Barratt nodded smartly and turned to go at once, but Adey grabbed for something – a filmy green scarf, dropped by someone running too fast to notice it go – and dropped it in Becker’s lap with a similar smart nod and a folding of his lips that said he would prefer to stay. Neither of them bothered saying they would come back; they all knew they would probably be too late for him. Becker worked up a smile for them, thin and bloody as it was.

 

            Barratt and Adey disappeared around the corner, and Becker set himself to tying the scarf around his leg. A moment’s thought reminded him that he had, in case of all-too-frequent Temple-related mishaps, a couple of handkerchiefs in his pocket: neither was totally clean and one was stained with gun oil but they might help a bit. He folded them quickly into a pad and pressed them against the wound, making use of a few expressions he’d picked up from Stringer that involved suppurating cankers and assorted testicles, and tied them into place with the scarf. All of it bloomed with blood at once, poppy-bright against the translucent green of the scarf and dubious white of the handkerchiefs, and Becker was aware that it was probably a useless exercise. But he refused to die without trying.

 

            That done, he rested his shotgun across his lap and reached for his phone. His fingers were trembling when he pulled it out of his pocket, and it took three tries for him to enter the code. Fortunately Morris’s number was always at the top of his recently-used contacts list, so it was easy for him to select that and type a message.

 

            _Thanks for everything. I love you best_. He wasn’t sure he was up to any more than that, and was extremely glad of his phone’s automatic capitalisation and spell-check. He thought he could probably write an essay telling Morris what he owed her. Suddenly, the sealed letter that his solicitor held addressed to her in case of his death seemed inadequate, even though it comprised four closely written sheets of paper and had been redrafted about six times over several months with the assistance of half a bottle of whiskey to get him over the embarrassment of admitting that he wished she had been born his sister, instead of only getting there eighteen years later. Imminent death, however, concentrated the mind wonderfully.

 

            He sent the message with an erratic stab of one finger that narrowly avoided deleting it, and managed on the second go to get the phone back into his pocket. The zip was undoubtedly a lost cause, so he didn’t even try, just curled his arms around his gun and waited for the last remaining velociraptor to come for his blood. The pain in his leg was burning through his veins, taking him over. He could barely see, let alone think, and when he heard the click of a velociraptor’s claws on the linoleum floor all he thought was _good – come and put me out of my misery_. The shotgun felt like lead in his arms, too heavy for him to lift.

 

            A door opened beside him and he jerked in surprise. It was one of the heavy internal fire doors that cut off the corridor that ran the length of the building from the one Becker was sitting in, and velociraptors – to the best of Becker’s flawed knowledge – did not open doors. He was pleased and annoyed to see a human figure step through it, and then he looked up, and up, and dimly recognised the face looking down at him. Distant relief lapped at the further corners of his brain.

 

            “Fuck!” Steve exclaimed, having almost tripped over him. “Beck!”

 

            “Raptor,” Becker murmured reproachfully, feeling that this was significantly more important, and Steve’s head snapped up.

 

            “Oh, shit,” Steve muttered, and then bent to grab Becker’s shoulder. Becker nearly sobbed as he shifted in response, and pain danced along his nerve endings. “Quickly, come on, if you come in here I can bar the door –“

 

            “Dead weight, dead meat,” Becker said, as clearly as he could. “Gun’s loaded. Kill it.”

 

            “What?” Steve said in apparent astonishment. Becker felt considerable irritation that he wasn’t doing something about the fucking raptor instead of standing around chit-chatting: Becker could hear those claws click-clicking closer, and the part of him that wasn’t teetering on the edge of unconsciousness was terrified beyond belief.

 

            “Kill it,” Becker repeated, and grabbed Steve’s ankle for emphasis. “ _Kill it_ , Stephen Hart.”

 

            Becker would remember all his life the sudden trapped stillness in Steve’s body, and the way he picked up the gun as if it was going to bite him and dropped the raptor with a single shot. And the last thing that Becker heard and saw was the team running towards them from the other end of the corridor, and the way they clattered to a stop when they saw Steve.

 

            “Get an ambulance,” Steve said curtly. “Becker’s dying.”  


            It’s about time somebody noticed, Becker thought, and promptly passed out.


	8. Chapter 8

            Steve had a lot of thoughts about the anomaly team, not all of them flattering, but he’d give them this: they moved fast in a crisis. They had Becker outside, properly bandaged and on a makeshift stretcher ready for removal to an ambulance which was on its way within a minute. None of them had been stupid enough to try to talk to Steve, either. It was bad enough to know for certain that the man Steve had let into his bed and whose company he had enjoyed, the only moderately successful distraction from thoughts of Ryan, actually knew about his past with the ARC – or Becker would not have called him ‘Stephen Hart’ and told him to kill the velociraptor. Steve had hoped so badly that the mention of Ditzy was a reference to a new posting, that Becker had just been responding to his discomfort by reassuring him when he’d said that he knew who Steve was, when he’d promised that he didn’t care about anything other than Steve’s presence in Exeter. Steve had wanted so desperately to believe that, had convinced himself that if Becker had known what he’d done, there would have been more anger and less friendliness in him, and Steve had been proven wrong. But worse than that unpleasant discovery was seeing the hope and delight on Connor’s face when he saw him, the wary pleasure on Abby’s, and then having to turn away from them.

 

            He didn’t want to go back to that life, Steve told himself fiercely, he didn’t _want_ to go back, and was interrupted in his self-indoctrination by the sound of Morris screaming.

 

            He swore aloud. He hadn’t realised Morris was sufficiently wily to get past the ARC’s cordon sanitaire, but then, Morris was capable of most things if they got her half an inch closer to Becker. She was, moreover, carrying a bloodied short sword and a scratched shield, either of which would cause most people to take a healthy step back and allow her to carry on with her day. Dressed in the heavy leather apron (now spotted with blood) and thick, practical clothes she wore to the forge even when they had her sweating like a pig, she threw aside the sword and shield with no care for innocent bystanders and charged the small group that contained Becker. She shot straight past the straw-haired new civilian, feinted and dodged Matt Rees’s attempt to intercept her with the athleticism of desperation, and dropped to her knees at Becker’s side. Her eyes were always huge behind her glasses, but now they were immense and welling with tears.

 

            “Beck,” she whispered, reaching out to touch Becker’s pale cheek with trembling fingers. “Beck, wake up, Beck, talk to me. Hilary, _please_!”

 

            Becker, of course, did not reply, and Morris curled her fingers tightly around his limp hand and stared desperately up at Matt, for whom Steve felt an unexpected pang of sympathy. “He’s not dying, is he? Please tell me he’s not dying!”

 

            “The ambulance will be here in a minute, miss,” Rees said gently. “How do you know him?”

 

            “He’s my best friend,” Morris sobbed, and clapped a hand over her mouth to stop any further noises escaping, although tears were running freely down her cheeks. For just one disconcerting moment, Steve saw the world the way she must see it now: her closest friend, her all-but-brother, lying on the floor and dying quietly in front of her.

 

            Steve cursed every last idiot who had let Morris see this. Why hadn’t Sarah stopped her? Sarah, of all people, should have been able to keep her from diving straight into trouble. He took a step forward towards the group, and when nobody threatened to shoot him and the sky did not fall in, he took another. He grasped Morris by the shoulders and lifted her gently.

 

            “Come on, Morris.”

 

            “No,” Morris snapped, and fought him. It would have worked a whole lot better if she had hung onto the sword, or if she was prepared to let go of Becker’s hand.

 

            “You’re his next of kin,” Stephen pointed out, trying to be reasonable and hoping, selfishly, that nobody would have noticed that this offered him his own escape route. At some point soon the team would get over their inexplicable fit of shyness and interrogate him, and that was the last thing Steve wanted. “They’ll tell you which hospital they take him to. You can’t help him right now.”

 

            “If he dies now I want to be here,” Morris said stubbornly. She had gone bright red with crying and her chin was stuck out at a frankly aggressive angle, and besides being struck by the logic of her point Steve was also struck by the fact that a distressed Morris was a bolshie Morris, and nothing short of a JCB would budge her from her purpose. Stephen let go of her shoulders and crouched down beside her, one hand on her back, and waited.

 

            Becker clung to the edge unassisted for a few more seconds, although Rees had two fingers on his pulse and a worried look on his face, and then the ambulance roared up all lights and sirens blaring and disgorged several paramedics, all of whom descended on Becker. Morris refused to let go of Becker’s hand until the absolute last second, and then folded her arms across her chest and dug her teeth into her lower lip, more tears running uncounted down her cheeks. She had not cried out loud since she had told Rees her relationship with Becker, but she was close to it.

 

            “Girlfriend?” one of the medics demanded, moving Becker onto a better stretcher.

 

            “Sister,” Steve said. It was close enough to the truth.

 

            “We’ll look after him. And you’ll look after her.”

 

            It was a statement of fact. Steve nodded and stood up, drawing Morris with him. Morris did not resist or protest, just huddled close to him and looked piteous. The ambulance doors slammed shut, and the ambulance took off. Morris turned her face into Steve’s chest, shaking with uncontrollable paroxysms of grief; Steve could feel her tears soaking through his shirt already.

 

            “Come on,” Steve said to Morris. “Let’s get you home. We can chase the ambulance when you’re not covered in blood – he won’t be out of surgery for hours.”

 

            Morris nodded into his chest and sniffled dolefully. Steve was not remotely surprised that when they left the scene, nobody tried to stop them; it would have taken a harder-hearted woman than Jenny Lewis to force Morris to sign the Official Secrets Act right now. They went straight to Morris’s car, where Sarah hurried to join them, exclaiming and worrying and generally making it clear that she had not been complicit in Morris’s escape from wherever the other civilians had been put – something Steve couldn’t really throw stones about for fear of shattering his own glass house, since he had deliberately evaded the soldiers to go in search of his friends. But he liked to think he was more qualified than Morris, however good she was with a Saxon short sword.

 

            Steve relieved Morris of her car keys while Sarah bundled her into the back seat, taking Steve’s place as Morris’s comforter, and then drove them home. They passed knots of students, some of whom were probably Morris’s, since they pointed and stared, but Steve wasn’t going to worry about them. He wasn’t going to worry about the sword Morris had thrown aside, either. The ARC, or just as likely one of Morris’s archaeological colleagues, could deal with it.

 

            When they got home Steve put the kettle on for cups of tea while Sarah led Morris upstairs by the hand and helped her to change and wash herself. From what Steve could hear from the bottom of the stairs, Sarah had gone so far as to sit outside the bathroom door and talk soothingly to Morris, a stream of calm and meaningless babble that would hopefully occupy her brain, instead of the sight of her bleeding best friend. Morris did not take very long to change, being an unfussy woman by nature, and all too soon she was sitting at the kitchen table, curled up on a chair, sipping the tea Steve had made her and staring into the middle distance. Steve wondered if he had looked like that when Ryan was brought back through the anomaly shredded half to death, and then hastily pushed the memory aside. It brought too many other unpleasant ones with it.

 

            “Are those the people you’re running away from?” Morris said eventually, sniffling and wiping her nose on her wrist.

 

            “What?” Steve and Sarah said simultaneously, indicating that they had spent too long living together.

 

            Morris eyeballed him. “The people who made you sad, so you left and came here instead, and wandered around looking pretty and angsty. Come on, Steve, I’m not stupid, I saw the way you looked at them and the way they looked back at you.”

 

            There was a long pause. “Yes,” Steve said at last.

 

            “Good. Thank you. Now, why did you leave?”

 

            Steve stared at her. “I don’t want to tell you that.”

 

            Morris stared back.

 

            “It doesn’t reflect well on me,” Steve admitted, shifting in his seat. “I just…”

 

            “Okay. New question. Who is the other gay soldier, the one you slept with before Beck?”

 

            Steve choked on his tea.

 

            “Okay, I’m with Morris on this one,” Sarah volunteered, raising a hand. “It’s blatantly obvious that the two of you are shagging. Are you dating now?”

 

            “No,” Steve said definitely, and then cast a guilty glance at Morris. This was not actually something he’d discussed with Beck, but hopefully Beck hadn’t got any long-term ideas… Steve was tired of upsetting people. “I mean, um –“

 

            “I know what you meant. Who was he? The other guy, I mean.” Morris took a large gulp of her tea.

 

            Steve opened his mouth and closed it, then looked down at the grain of the pine kitchen table. It wasn’t a great table, wobbly and stained, but the wood had been good once, and it still had pale lights that reminded him inexorably of the way Ryan’s hair bleached in the summer sun. _Ryan_ , he thought miserably. He didn’t have the right to call him Tom any more. He’d fucked that up good and proper.

 

            “I think I’d rather answer your other question,” he said, in a rather small voice, and was astonished to find that it was true.

 

            Morris nodded, satisfied, and sat back in her chair.

 

            “Just… if you want to throw me out… give me a few weeks to find somewhere else to stay?”

 

            “We aren’t going to want to throw you out,” Morris said impatiently. “We just want to know about this thing which is upsetting you, because _we are your friends_ , Steve.”

 

            “Yeah,” Sarah said, and when Steve looked up at her she smiled kindly. She had a much more reassuring smile than Morris, Steve thought.

 

            Steve took a deep breath, and got the first sentence out in a rush, on the principle that it was going to be the hardest. “Ten years ago I was a Master’s student at Central Metropolitan University and my supervisor was a woman named Helen Cutter.” He choked on the exhale, but drew another ragged breath and carried on. “She was… attractive. Not exactly beautiful, but vivid, and alive, and brilliant. Most of her Master’s classes and some of the undergrads went head-over-heels for her. She… there were rumours that she slept with them but I didn’t believe it. I thought too highly of her. And anyway, she was married to a man called Nick, Nick Cutter.” It was so hard to say Nick’s name again, but Steve pressed on. “He was also attractive, in the same sort of way, and they had… a pretty legendary marriage, I mean, you could always tell there was something between them, like electricity. And then he went off to America on fieldwork for four months and Helen… Helen looked my way, and I… I came when she called.” Steve shook his head, disgusted by himself. “She had me for the asking. Told me that the chemistry between her and Nick had gone sour, that he didn’t understand her or her ideas, and I believed her, and when he came back and I stopped believing her she told me… She told me that if I knew what was good for me, I’d keep quiet and do what she said. And she was my supervisor on this unique course. She had the keys to everything I wanted. So I did what she said.”

 

            Morris’s smaller, rougher hand covered his where it lay on the table and squeezed tightly; he wrapped his fingers around hers and squeezed back, heartened by this proof that she didn’t absolutely despise him, not yet. “And then?” Morris prompted. She had a low, sweet sort of a voice, and her accent had almost stopped reminding him of Connor’s. Fortunately it wasn’t quite northern enough to be a dead ringer.

 

            “In 1998, Helen disappeared,” Steve said dully. “Just vanished into the Forest of Dean. She and Nick – and Cutter had apparently argued, so Nick was a suspect, and so was I, because she was personally supervising my work. Ni- Cutter was devastated. He had no idea about the students, about me. And I felt so fucking guilty I did whatever he needed to keep his head above water, because it was helping me keep my head above water, and he saw to it that my Master’s got finished and he helped me get onto a PhD programme, and I became his research assistant, and… never said anything. Because he needed me. And… I needed him, too. Helen… cut me off from other people my age. It was like they knew I had a secret – they probably did know I had a secret. I – Cutter was my best friend. I couldn’t tell him. And we were getting better, it was getting better, I thought I might get a chance to forget about it, when this student pops into our office a couple of years ago and says that there’s a beast in the Forest of Dean and _Helen_ would have investigated it, so of course, we do.”

 

            “A beast like the one we saw today?” Morris asked.

 

            _Fuck_ the Official Secrets Act. “No. A lot bigger. And we became part of a… a team to deal with beasts like that, and to deal with… guess who popped up?”

 

            “Helen,” Sarah guessed, dark eyes wide and serious.

 

            “Yeah. And she seemed to… understand that stuff. More than we did. But she wouldn’t talk about it, and she wouldn’t come in, and I didn’t know what to do or who to talk to or whether she would tell, and in the meantime, I… met someone.”

 

            “The gay soldier.”

 

            Steve did not dignify that with a response. “Someone who… made me happy. But also someone honest. And I didn’t want him to know I’d been lying to everyone around me for ten years, I didn’t want to see him hate me, I didn’t – and we were okay for a while, and then he… Then one of the beasts mauled him so badly he nearly died, and Helen told everyone about us.” A small, broken pause. “Cutter was furious. It was hell. And Ryan – my boyfriend – was in hospital, and in recovery, and he was angry because everything hurt and he wasn’t sure he could go back to the army, and I thought I was useless to him now, and we… pushed each other away. It was my fault. I could have stopped it happening and I didn’t. And Helen came back and I knew I would go to her when she called because I always do, and everything seemed such a sodding mess that the only way out was _out_. So I applied for a funded post-doc, short notice, and came straight here. Where I met you, and you called me Steve and made me your friend, and you didn’t know anything about any of it, so I… lied again.”

 

            “What were you called before, if not Steve?” Sarah frowned. “Do you mind being Steve?”

 

            “I don’t think of myself as Stephen any more,” Steve admitted. “It’s easier.” He looked at Morris and saw, to his horror, that she was crying again. “Morris!”

 

            She wiped her eyes. “Steve. You were in an abusive, coercive relationship with your supervisor when you were what, twenty-two, and then you were accused of her murder and the only way you could cope with the damage she did to you was to say nothing? And then she told your best friend and it was you he got angry with? So angry your job wasn’t worth it any more?”

 

            Steve thought this was a very partial, unbalanced summary and said so.

 

            “Nope,” Sarah said firmly. “That is one hundred percent accurate. Have you ever known Morris to be any good at lying?”  


            “No,” Steve conceded.

 

            Morris rapped smartly on the table. “But look. You thought all of this was _your fault_? You thought we would _blame you_?”

 

            “It is my fault,” Steve said, confused, and then repeated with a desperation he didn’t quite understand – “It is my fault, it _is_ my fault, that’s why I had to _leave them_.”

 

            Morris came round the table and climbed into his lap, apparently all the better to hug him, arms winding around his neck and face pressed against his shoulder. Her glasses poked holes in him and Steve wavered, not sure what to do; in the end he settled for putting his arms around her and hugging her back. It was curiously comforting. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault. Oh my God, Steve. You are the _very last_ person whose fault it was. Look, we’ve all done stupid things, remind me to tell you about – well, another time. But this was not your stupid thing. You didn’t do anything wrong, do you understand?”

 

            Steve did not understand, but it made him feel somewhat better to think that Morris apparently did.


	9. Chapter 9

            “She’s right,” Sarah said, and got up to fetch a box of tissues and glasses of water. She ran a light, affectionate hand over Morris’s hair as she passed, and dropped a disconcerting kiss on the top of Steve’s head. “Maybe you had to leave and hide, but that was to protect yourself. Not because you were at fault. You are not an albatross, Steve. People can’t hang you around their necks and pretend you are responsible for every bad thing that happens.”

 

            “Er,” said Steve.

 

            “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Sarah said, in a voice that indicated that this was illuminating information. Steve did not bother telling her that he had not the slightest clue what she was talking about, since he thought he grasped her point anyway. He took a handful of tissues from the box and stuffed them into Morris’s face: Morris sat up, blew her nose and scrubbed her face.

 

            “Anyway,” Sarah said, in the tones of someone taking charge since everyone else present was too afflicted by emotions. “Firstly, let’s just be clear: Steve, this is your home, we are not throwing you out of it.”

 

            Morris blew her nose again and nodded emphatically.

 

            “Secondly, speaking of protecting yourself. Your former friends know where you are now. What can we do to help you? Do you want to talk to the university? Do you want to speak to the police? I bet you could get some kind of a restraining order against this Nick Cutter person, he sounds like a hellbeast.”

 

            “He hit me,” Steve said, remembering the clear blue light of the lab and the frightened lab technician and the rage in Nick’s eyes. “So maybe.”

 

            Morris made a small, dangerous noise. Steve patted her hair awkwardly to soothe her.

 

            “Just don’t leave me alone,” he said to Sarah. “My old friends will want to get me on my own.” He wanted to add that that included Becker, whose true motives were now somewhat in doubt, but mentioning him would probably set Morris off, and in any case he would be in hospital for weeks with a leg injury like that – if it didn’t kill him.

 

            “Done,” Sarah said, and Morris nodded.

 

            Outside in the hall, the landline rung, and they all jumped. Morris set her tea down hastily and disappeared into the hall to answer it, leaving a puddle of tea and an upturned chair in her wake. Steve righted the chair and Sarah mopped up the tea, and they both eavesdropped furiously on the half of Morris’s conversation that they could hear.

 

            “Hello. Yes, speaking, who is this?... Okay… Oh, thank _God_.”

 

            Sarah extended an imperious hand and Steve high-fived her. Morris would not be thanking God if Becker was dead, and it was exceedingly unlikely that the phone call was about anything else.

 

            “… Where?... Yes, I can, I’ll go right now… _How_ long? Bloody hell… No. No, I’m at home. I’ve got housemates, they’re looking after me… No, I won’t drive, Sarah will take me… Thanks, that’s very kind of you. I’m okay. It was… a shock. But I’m okay. I think… Thank you for telling me, anyway. …Yes, that’s correct. Thank you. Bye.”

 

            Steve heard the phone go down and Morris wobbled back into the kitchen, looking profoundly relieved, and promptly collapsed on top of Sarah in a fit of relieved tears that, thankfully, dried up almost as soon as they arrived. Steve was not sure her tear ducts could take much more.

 

            “Becker’s okay?” Steve demanded.

 

            “He’s still in surgery, he’s not going to be out for another hour or two, but apparently it’s looking good and they’ll call me if there’s any more news.” She raised her head from Sarah’s shoulder. “They were very nice about it. He’s at the Royal Devon and Exeter and they’ve been told to expect me. Although he’s going to be in intensive care for a bit.” She wiped her hands over her face, then scrubbed them on the knees of her jeans.

 

            “Who was it who called you?” Steve asked, trying not to press too hard, but there was a decent chance it had been Ryan and the very last thing Steve wanted to do was accompany Morris to Becker’s bedside and get ambushed by members of the ARC. It was probably safe this evening, if at no other time. They would all have gone back to London to handle the aftermath of the creature incursion, the only one who might still be on the spot was Jenny Lewis and, unlike Abby, Connor, Cutter or the total stranger, she was not particularly likely to interfere with him if he asked her to go. She had a healthy appreciation of the hellscape that had been his workplace, and she probably wouldn’t want to jeopardise whatever equilibrium the ARC had reached. The new guy had no first-hand knowledge of him or the months when he and Cutter had been at loggerheads. Connor, and maybe Abby, would want to go back to the good old days. Well, Connor definitely would; Abby might know better. The less said about Cutter the better.

 

            “Some Major I’ve never met before,” Morris said, chewing on one fingernail and regarding the contents of the fridge with narrow eyes.

 

            “Name?”  


            “Preston.” Morris closed the fridge door again. “I was told that the person who would contact me in case of emergency was a Major Ryan, but apparently he’s busy. Operational something or other.”

 

            Steve’s heart did various backflips of relief and terror. The ARC team must have been called out to something else that was fairly dire straight away, and if that didn’t put their mind off Steve’s reappearance nothing would. He had met Major Preston once or twice, and didn’t want to risk encountering him again, though. It would be easier to evade him than it would be to avoid Ryan at the hospital, however; Ryan could pick him out in a massive crowd – or at least he used to be able to. “Did he offer to meet you there?”  


            “Yes. I said I’d be okay. The scariest thing is the waiting. Oh, shit!” Morris dropped a teaspoon, and Steve could hear in the clattering of the cutlery and see in the slow widening of Sarah’s eyes that the penny had dropped along with it. “Ryan. Your ex-boyfriend. Oh God, this is gloriously awkward for everyone.”

 

            That had occurred to Steve. Becker had unknowingly been shagging his boss’s ex-boyfriend – someone Steve was desperate to avoid, and someone Becker had to spend a significant proportion of his working day with. And Ryan would not be remotely pleased to discover that he and Becker had slept together, however final their break-up. “Yeah, I’d give a lot to see Becker’s face when he realises that…”  


            “He probably already has realised that. Oh lord. Well, at least neither of you has feelings for each other.”

 

            “Hey!”

 

            “Go ahead and tell me I’m wrong!” Morris retorted, unaccustomedly combative, then stopped short and ran her hands through her hair. “Sorry, Steve. I…” Her shoulders slumped.

 

            “It’s all right, Morris,” Sarah said gently. “You don’t have to pretend everything’s okay.”

 

            “I’m not pretending,” Morris snapped, evidently offended. “I – you have to be practical in situations like this, you need to remember to eat and sleep…”

 

            “Have you done this before?” Sarah asked, clearly drawing impolite conclusions about Becker’s capacity for taking care of himself.

 

            “One of Becker’s and my friends – Smithy. His family are all in deepest darkest Scotland, none of them further south than Aberdeen, and his boyfriend at the time was – well, frankly, he was a wet blanket.” Morris cast her eyes heavenwards. “He couldn’t cope with anything more serious than toasted cheese. So when Smithy got his foot blown off, I did lots of the fetching and carrying and waiting and stuff. This was about a year ago, now. So I’ve… I’ve done this before.” Her steadfast expression wobbled somewhat, but was back on her face before Steve could comment.

 

            “Then why don’t you get some sleep while Steve and I cook supper?” Sarah suggested. “I know you get up at the crack of dawn for fun, but if you’re going to be staying up all night with Becker – wait, will they _let_ you?”

 

            “Intensive care, desperate case.” Morris’s composure wobbled again, and her knuckles showed white against the amusing tea-towel – a virulent shade of green emblazoned with KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON DIGGING, a small white pyramid above and a matching trowel below the words – she was twisting between her hands. “Yes. Probably. If I look pitiful enough. They’ll probably make you wait outside – that’s if you don’t mind coming – I know what I told Major Preston but I _can_ drive myself.”

 

            “Of course we’re coming,” Sarah said firmly. Steve nodded and looked supportive. “Go and get some sleep. Actually, give me your parents’ numbers and I’ll call them to let them know what’s happening – didn’t you say they treat Beck like a son? And I’ll email the Dean about this, he can’t possibly expect you to teach on Monday with all this happening.”

 

            Morris’s lower lip trembled. “Yes. I. Thank you.” She patted down her pockets and pulled her mobile phone from one of them, tossing it out into thin air; fortunately, Steve lunged forward and caught it. Then she turned around and went upstairs.

 

            Steve handed the phone to Sarah. “You phone, I’ll cook. Morris has been subjected to enough horror today.”

 

            He remembered, in a dim sort of way, that they had meant to do roast chicken for supper (there had been a deal on at the supermarket, and Sarah apparently had an insatiable appetite for roast chicken, so Steve foresaw a lot of fowl in his future). Well, that was easy – and it took long enough that Morris could get some decent sleep without guiltily thinking that she had to be at the hospital right now. Fleetingly, he contemplated constructing sandwiches for the long wait until Becker was out of the woods – it was twelve hours after a major operation like that, wasn’t it? Steve recalled waiting forever for Ryan to be safe, but he was pretty sure that ‘forever’ was, in fact, represented by twelve hours – since even if Morris didn’t get hungry he and Sarah would. Then he set the idea to one side, cutting a lemon in half and stuffing it up the chicken’s backside while the oven heated up.  Cans of Red Bull, thermoses of hot coffee and snacks from the hospital vending machines would probably be more like it.

 

            Steve blinked, and suddenly he was sitting on a hard plastic chair in a dimly-lit ward, drinking Red Bull and waiting, waiting, watching Ryan’s immobile face under its endless bandages, his still body, and the endless array of wires and drips and beeping machines. 

 

            Steve blinked again, and he was back in his own brightly-lit kitchen in Exeter, miles and miles from Selly Oak, and he had just dropped the salt and pepper on the floor, a trail of black and white breadcrumbs leading him right back here, right back to reality.

 

            I don’t want to go back, he told himself. But he couldn’t stop himself balancing Ryan’s smile against his angry face, and wishing that he could. Except that there was no way back, not past Helen, and the ARC, and the gorgonopsid that had nearly killed Ryan, and Becker, Becker warm and real and fun in his bed, but not _Ryan_. That was the only thing wrong with him. He wasn’t Ryan, so he didn’t measure up, and if he didn’t measure up Steve had no idea who would.

           

            And he might still be dying, and whatever else Steve had done he owed it to him to take care of Morris. So he shoved the chicken in the oven with unnecessary violence, and set about peeling potatoes for mash.

                       

***

           

            Becker regained consciousness in the middle of Saturday afternoon. He didn’t wake properly, but he was conscious enough to glance around his cubicle and note Morris asleep in the chair beside him with her jaw hanging open and big dark circles under her eyes, and someone else standing over him. He blinked, tried to clear his vision, and finally ascertained that it was Major Ryan. He attempted speech without knowing what the hell to say – because by now Ryan must know that he knew Steve, and he would be just about justified in feeling as if Becker had betrayed him by not admitting to Steve’s whereabouts – and found that the oxygen mask over his face got in his way.

 

            “Cut that out,” Major Ryan said quietly, putting a calming hand on his wrist.

 

            Becker relaxed, and waited while he was subjected to intense scrutiny.

 

            “You’re lucky to be alive,” Major Ryan remarked. “Don’t even think about going and dying on us now.”

 

            Becker managed a minute shake of his head.

 

            Ryan almost smiled. “Go back to sleep, Becker.” He moved around the bed almost silently, brushed Morris’s hair out of her face and draped her discarded hoodie over her, the better to keep her warm. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you didn’t tell me where Stephen was. If he doesn’t want me to know… it’s better I don’t.”  


            Becker blinked in astonishment, then busied himself committing the words to memory. He doubted Ryan would ever say them again, not when Becker was truly conscious and there was witnesses present who weren’t asleep.

 

            Ryan glanced at him and raised a censorious eyebrow. “I thought I told you to go to sleep?”

 

            Becker closed his eyes again and was gone.


	10. Chapter 10

            The next time Becker woke, he was in a position to appreciate the fact that everyone – except, perhaps, Morris, Sarah and Steve – had confidently expected him to die. Stringer told him so at some length.

 

            “Thanks, mate,” Becker said crossly. His pain medication had been reduced, and although this was something Becker was in favour of on general principle, his leg was annoying him. “Good to know. Did you bring cards so I can thrash you again?”  


            Stringer grinned and shook his head. “I don’t play with people who have your luck.”

 

            “Which of us is in a hospital bed?”

 

            “You should have seen yourself, Becker, you looked dead already when we got to you. A hospital is better than the alternative.”

 

            “I know that,” Becker told him. He shrugged. “The doctors say I’ll get back to full fitness relatively soon, if I’m careful with physio and similar bullshit. I’ve – well, I haven’t had worse, but this really isn’t the worst case scenario, is it.”

 

            “No. You should be worrying about your girl, though.” Stringer leant comfortably back in his chair, resting one ankle on the opposite knee, and grinned at the nurse who stuck her head around the door of the private room Becker had been popped into. “It’s fine, ma’am, he’s behaving himself. Dr Morris saw you before we piled you into the ambulance.”

 

            “What!” Becker yelped, bolting upright. His leg twinged sharply, and he subsided, swearing badly enough to raise a twitch of Stringer’s eyebrow. “Nobody told me she was there! I don’t remember her being there!”

 

            “You were out cold. It was when we were waiting for the ambulance. She came running over with a bloody _sword and shield_ , chucked them aside and flung herself down beside you, very dramatic.” Stringer shook his head. “I’m sorry, Becker, if we’d known she was there or that she somehow got round the lads…”

 

            “How the _hell_ did she manage that?”

 

            “Lyle thinks she must have overheard something about a dying soldier and panicked and guessed it was you. He knows he saw her go off to the ladies’ loos muttering about times of the month – we need more women around, we could have sent someone with her. That bought her a few extra minutes to, we think, climb out of the window in the ladies and come after you.” Stringer picked up his bottle of water from off the floor and took a large gulp.

 

            “Fuck,” Becker said briefly. “She wasn’t supposed to see that.”

 

            “You’re telling me…”

 

            Becker gave him a narrow look. “You realise Abby could just as easily see the same thing. Without having to rely on luck and Lacey or Tremayne not being there to stop her getting to you.”

 

            Stringer went faintly pink at the tips of his ears, and Becker wished for a camera. “You’re a perceptive bastard, Becker.”

 

            “Bullshit,” Becker said with asperity. “You’re just not subtle. Ask her out, for fuck’s sake, Lyle’s got a pool going and if you don’t hurry up Finn’s going to make a killing. He put a tenner on Christmas and Lyle gave him insane odds.”

 

            An expression passed over Stringer’s face that would also have benefited from photographic documentation. Becker watched it with fascination as it flitted from calculation to annoyance, and translated this as Stringer trying to work out how he could manipulate the pool to his own ends while suppressing irritation at Finn’s seemingly low opinion of his ability to spit it out and deal with the consequences.

 

            He let his eyes wander around his room. It was surprisingly full of – well, _stuff_. Jack and Frieda had evidently been down, because the nurses had been talking about the lovely homemade cake Becker’s parents had brought them, and Becker had a crocheted blanket folded at the foot of his bed – more for familiarity than for warmth. It had been put through a hot washing-machine and tumbler-dryer, treatment that would have destroyed any wool other than the villainous purple and blue acrylic yarn Frieda had used to make it several years previously, and it had been Becker’s unofficial property since the first Christmas he had spent at Morris’s. There were get-well-soon cards on his bedside table and a small stack of dubious historic thrillers by Bernard Cornwell, contributions from Freddie, the ARC team and those of his friends who Morris had apprised of his misfortunes. There was an especially amusing one from Taffy. For the sake of the nurses’ sensibilities, Becker had put it behind some of the more family-friendly ones.

 

            There was even a bunch of flowers perched on top of a cupboard, courtesy of Lester but undoubtedly chosen by Miss Wickes. Since Lester was Lester, and Miss Wickes only ever saw fit to rein in her boss to a certain extent, the card read ‘I look forward to your prompt and healthy return to work’.  Miss Wickes and Miss Lewis had sent a smaller bunch with a card that read ‘Ignore James, just get better’. Becker had laughed until he cried when he read the two together, attracting a certain amount of attention from the nurses, and he sincerely hoped that Lester would come to visit him: the entire rotation that worked on his ward had developed a very low opinion of Lester, and a Lester faced with angry nurses would be a hilarious Lester.

 

            Morris visited daily, often bringing Sarah with her, but never Steve; they had explained that Steve was terrified of being ambushed by his former friends from the ARC, and remembering Steve’s general skittishness Becker was not surprised that they hadn’t tried to talk him into visiting. Becker was glad, actually. He didn’t want to give the impression that his relationship with Steve was more than the odd shag when convenient to both of them, not when both Steve and Ryan clearly missed each other desperately. Becker had not forgotten Ryan’s earlier remarks, and he didn’t think they were the words of someone who had conclusively left their ex behind. Moreover, he remembered earlier excruciating discussions with Ryan on the subject of Stephen Hart, and he remembered his own conviction that Steve needed someone who understood him and made him happy, and that that person was probably Ryan.

 

            “You get a lot of visitors,” Stringer remarked, poking at the things on his bedside table and almost consigning Becker’s iPod – fully charged, hooked up to Morris’s speakers, and currently paused halfway through _The Fellowship of the Ring_ as read by Morris – to oblivion.

 

            Becker shrugged. “A few.”

 

            “Just friends, or family too?”

 

            “You’re fishing, Joel,” Becker said, but softened it with a half-smile. He knew Stringer was an inveterate gossip when he felt information wasn’t too sensitive to be shared, and he was also well aware that his father would come and see him when hell froze over. His mother, God alone knew how, had managed to contrive to send him a letter. But even she might falter at the prospect of getting from Oxfordshire to Exeter without arousing his father’s suspicion and several months of angry disapproval. Becker didn’t really mind if Stringer knew that his blood parents weren’t visiting him; it would only help Becker distance himself from his father. But Becker sure as hell wasn’t going to actually tell Stringer that.

 

            Stringer gave him an unrepentant grin. “Just asking. Speaking of visitors, do you hear from Stephen?”

 

            Becker tried to think how best to answer this. “He came the first night,” he said eventually. “At least, according to Morris. Since then he’s been avoiding anywhere ARC people might turn up, and I don’t blame him.”

 

            Stringer let that sentence dangle invitingly in mid-air.

 

            “He’s carrying around a fucking _insane_ amount of guilt,” Becker said shortly. “And Morris told me his whole story. Cutter is a selfish wanker and his ex-wife is a raging bitch.”

 

            Stringer said nothing.

 

            “Helen Cutter’s actions with respect to Steve as a student were unethical and immoral,” Becker elaborated. “She was responsible for his academic and pastoral welfare; she decided to play games with him instead. And Cutter blamed _Steve_ for that.”   

 

            “You’ve got strong feelings on the subject.”  


            “I’ve got family in academia. And I like Steve.” Becker winced and shifted; his leg was getting more painful. Moving did not help.

 

            “Are you OK?”

 

            “It’s nothing.”

 

            “Bollocks.”  


            “It’s _nothing_ ,” Becker repeated with emphasis.

 

            Stringer raised his hands in surrender. “So if I tell you Lester wants Steve back on the team, will that also be nothing?”

 

            Becker heaved an exasperated sigh and did not fail to notice that Stringer had changed the name by which he referred to Hart – from Stephen to Steve. It was almost seamless; he didn’t stutter over the difference at all. “The only person at the ARC who should consider trying to contact Steve is Ryan. Maybe Connor. Steve has had it with anomalies.”

 

            Stringer was silent for a moment. Then he said slowly: “Ryan hasn’t been the same since Steve went. He was happier when Steve was here. Even when he first got injured, Steve stopped him from going totally off the rails, just by existing.” A pause. “So you wouldn’t happen to have Ryan’s number.”

 

            “Yeah.”

 

             “And you wouldn’t happen to have conveyed it to Steve.”

 

            “I have minions to do the conveying.” Becker poked resentfully at his leg. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a bit stuck here.”

 

            Stringer was still laughing at him when the nurse came in.

 

            “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, with a maternal smile for Stringer laughing and Becker mocking him for it. “Visiting hours are over. And Captain Becker is due some more painkillers.”

 

            “Thank fucking God,” Becker said sincerely.

           

***

 

            The first thing Becker knew about Steve’s visit was Sarah acting as an advance guard, and hamming it up to the point where Becker was about to recommend a part as a spare policeman in _The Pirates of Penzance_. Sarah’s love of the absurd, he felt, would go reasonably well with Gilbert and Sullivan, provided she could be persuaded to keep quiet about the plotholes.

 

            He watched with a perfect impassive mask as first her nose and then the rest of her appeared around the doorframe, sneaking with remarkable aplomb and considerable style. He broke and let his mouth twitch as she flattened herself against the wall in response to a passing nurse, and she grinned at him.

 

            “Do you really need to do that?” he demanded, smiling against his will.

 

            “Steve is so unbelievably twitchy,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes. “Nothing will persuade him your colleagues aren’t after him. He and Morris are waiting for me to give the all-clear, and then I’m going to lurk in a café with a nice view of the ward and Facebook pictures of all your workmates.”

 

            “Are they after him?” Becker enquired, bypassing the stalking.

 

            “Yes, but not very effectively.” Sarah pulled out her phone and started to text someone, presumably Morris. “They sent a sweet boy with a trilby to try to track him down first. Chloe ate him for breakfast.”

 

            “I bet,” Becker said, imagining the scene. Connor might have years of anomalies under his belt, but years of anomaly experience paled in comparison with handling Morris’s student Chloe, who was something of a phenomenon. Possibly a natural-disaster sort of phenomenon.

 

            “Then somebody called Nick Cutter pitched up,” Sarah pursued, and the tightening of her lips assured Becker that her opinion of Nick Cutter was just as scabrous as his, “and he – oh, Beck, it was beautiful, I wish you could have been there. He fell straight into Morris’s waiting arms and she minced him and had him on toast while Steve hid in the disabled bogs.”

 

            Becker grinned. “Are they still at it?”  


            “No. We spotted a couple of strangers around, enough to make everyone nervous, and I had the pleasure of chatting to a Mr James Lester, very polite, most charming, so delightfully easy to wind up, who turned up on our doorstep. But it all stopped a couple of days ago and none of them has got through to Steve.”

 

            “Good,” Becker said, connecting this to his little chat with Joel Stringer and regarding the results with some satisfaction.

 

            “Anyway. See you later, Beck!” Sarah disappeared out of the door and was replaced by Steve, on his own, looking unusually awkward.

 

            “Have you lost Morris?” Becker enquired. It was the first time he’d seen Steve since the blood-soaked hallway in the archaeology department.

 

            “She went to the ladies’,” Steve explained, and sat down.

 

            There was a small pause. Becker decided to fill it. “Thanks for killing that raptor.”

 

            Steve looked at him in surprise, then cracked a small, indecently attractive smile. Becker allowed himself a moment of mourning for the fact that Steve would definitely not be in his bed ever again. “Thanks for not telling the ARC about me. When did you guess?”

 

            “Morris told me your last name, and you’d dropped a couple of hints.” It was close enough to the truth. “You knew who Ditzy was. Things like that.”

 

            “Oh.” Steve looked at his feet. “Stupid of me.”

 

            “Not subtle,” Becker allowed, and Steve looked up at him with a proper grin. “Sarah says you’ve had some bother.”

 

            Steve wrinkled his nose and stretched his long legs out. “Some. It stopped the other day. I got an email to my official university account saying that, after taking advice, the ARC would not be pursuing me to finish my contract with them, but asking that I keep them in mind in future.”

 

            “Can’t have been written by Lester,” Becker said automatically. “Too nice.”

 

            “It reads like Miss Wickes talks,” Steve confessed, and another small silence was perpetrated, this one more comfortable.

 

            Becker seized the moment. “Lend me your phone, mate?”

 

            Steve looked surprised, but handed it over; Becker picked up his own and transferred the number he wanted from his phone (where it was under Ryan, Terrifying) to Steve’s (where he put it under Ryan, Tom). He held the phone out to Steve, who regarded the new number on the screen as if it were poisonous.

 

            “He misses you,” Becker said. “He misses you a lot. And you miss him. I know you do.”

 

            Steve’s mouth twisted. “I’m sorry, Beck. I know we – you –“

 

            “Oh god, don’t be sorry,” Becker said, vaguely revolted. “We had fun. That’s it. It was fun.” He felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “Just stop acting the martyr. You deserve nice things as much as anyone else.”

 

            “A _men_ ,” Morris said with unusual vehemence, entering the room still wiping alcoholic hand gel off her fingers. “You aren’t going to have another fit of the vapours, are you?”

 

            Steve, surprisingly, smiled. “No.”

 

            “Good. We’re all right, then.” Morris squinted at Beck, as if searching for signs of fresh infirmity. She wasn’t going to find any: the wound was, according to the doctors, healing impressively well, with no signs of infection. “We are all right, right?”

 

            Becker ignored the unfinished business between Steve and Ryan, the discomfort of his leg, the undoubted hornets’ nest of emotions that would be raging at the ARC and would all too soon become his problem, and his own concerns that he had exposed Morris to sights she should not have had to live with. He smiled at Morris. “Yeah. We’re all right.”

 

            Morris smiled back.

 


End file.
